It's Up to Erdogan

According to AP's "Saudis blame ‘fistfight’ for Jamal Khashoggi’s death":

The announcements came in a flurry of statements carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency early Saturday morning. 

“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Public Prosecution showed that the suspects had traveled to Istanbul to meet with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi as there were indications of the possibility of his returning back to the country,” the statement read. “Discussions took place with the citizen Jamal Khashoggi during his presence in the consulate of the kingdom in Istanbul by the suspects (that) did not go as required and developed in a negative way, leading to a fistfight. . The brawl led to his death and their attempt to conceal and hide what happened.”

There’s been no indication Khashoggi had any immediate plans to return to the kingdom.

Ben Hubbard's "Saudi Arabia Says Jamal Khashoggi Was Killed in Consulate Fight" in The New York Times is different. Quoting an anonymous Saudi official, Hubbard's account places Khashoggi's rendition forefront in the narrative, in juxtaposition to the official Saudi statement that the 15-man hit team was in Istanbul because Khashoggi had expressed an interest to return to the kingdom:

For the first time on Saturday, a Saudi official familiar with the government’s handling of the situation put forward the kingdom’s narrative of the events that led to Mr. Khashoggi’s death.

The kingdom had a general order to return dissidents living abroad, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing. When the consulate in Istanbul reported that Mr. Khashoggi would be coming on Oct. 2 to pick up a document needed for his coming marriage, General Assiri dispatched a 15-man team to confront him.

The team included Maher Abdulaziz Mutrib, a security officer identified by The New York Times this week as a frequent member of the crown prince’s security detail during foreign trips, the official said. Mr. Mutrib had been chosen because he had worked with Mr. Khashoggi a decade ago in the Saudi Embassy in London and knew him personally.

But the order to return Mr. Khashoggi to the kingdom was misinterpreted as it made its way down the chain of command, the Saudi official said, and a confrontation ensued when Mr. Khashoggi saw the men. He tried to flee, the men stopped him, punches were thrown, Mr. Khashoggi screamed and one of the men put him in a chokehold, strangling him to death, the official said.

Eighteen Saudis have been arrested, including the entire 15-man hit team. Saud al-Qahtani, a propagandist for the crown prince, has been sacked, along with Maj. Gen. Ahmed al-Assiri, the deputy director of Saudi intelligence. Mohammed bin Salman has been put in charge of a review of Saudi intelligence.

The whole thing -- the cover story, its announcement in the middle of the night at the beginning of weekend, the arrests and dismissals -- is a joke. Why not simply say that Khashoggi fainted in the men's room and hit his head on the marble sink? Or that he stumbled coming down the stairs and broke his neck? Both make about as much sense as the official cover story.

One thing is certain: If it is true that Turkey is in possession of audio recordings documenting Khashoggi's torture and murder -- which, according to Carlotta Gall in "In Khashoggi Disappearance, Turkey’s Slow Drip of Leaks Puts Pressure on Saudis," appears to be the case -- then Erdogan can promptly destroy the official Saudi version of Khashoggi's demise. Chopping someone's fingers off while he is still alive is not the same as a fistfight tragically ending in a deadly chokehold.

Trump is backing the official Saudi version of events. But it appears that wily Erdogan is not yet finished with the crown prince and the U.S. president. Carlotta Gall says that

The success of the campaign of leaks, and the gripping controversy around the case, may now be expanding the government’s ambitions, emboldening it to undermine Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, who is seen as unfriendly to Turkey’s interests.

“Initially, it seemed Turkey was seeking a bargain with or financial support from Saudi Arabia,” said Amanda Sloat, a former State Department official now at the Brookings Institution. “But it increasingly appears that Turkey is seeking to inflict maximum damage on M.B.S.”

It is not clear what Mr. Erdogan is demanding, but the policy of official leaks has been clearly to prevent a complete whitewash of the disappearance. Pro-government columnists have called for the Saudi crown prince to go.

Hilal Kaplan, one of the most outspoken columnists, known to be close to the president and strongly anti-American, even suggested in her column Friday that the United States could be blamed as an accessory in Mr. Khashoggi’s murder.

“If the U.S. administration continues this defensive line of language in favor of M.B.S. and reiterates mostly what they want to hear, one would fairly wonder if Trump and his Middle East peace envoy Jared Kushner also had prior knowledge of this atrocity to come and did nothing.”

(This is the point Wayne Madsen made the other day.)

Maybe Erdogan is tired of all the wars raging around him. A war with Iran would be disastrous for Turkey. Taking down MbS is one way to prevent that war from starting.