THE FIRST requirement was to sweep a murder case under the carpet. On April 7th a court in Istanbul suspended the trial of 26 Saudis accused of killing Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi journalist, in Turkey in 2018, and transferred the file back to Saudi Arabia. Prince Muhammad bin Salman, the kingdom’s crown prince and de facto ruler, who is widely accused of ordering the murder, was never expected to answer for the crime personally—in Turkey, let alone at home in Saudi Arabia.
Any hope, already slim, that the people who carried it out would be brought to justice in any jurisdiction has vanished. The way is clear for Turkey and Saudi Arabia, at loggerheads over the affair, to cosy up. On April 28th Mr Erdogan met Prince Muhammad in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. The president gave the smiling prince a big hug.
Diplomatically isolated, starved of hard currency, short of foreign investment and bereft of revenue from tourism, Turkey has been waging a regional charm offensive. Mr Erdogan has mended fences with Israel, whose president, Isaac Herzog, visited Turkey in March, and also with the United Arab Emirates, whose de facto ruler, Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan, dropped by last autumn to promise a fund of $10bn to push investment into Turkey.
A row between Turkey and Greece over maritime claims in the eastern Mediterranean has died down, though Greece has recently complained that Turkish fighter jets are still violating its air space. Mr Erdogan also hopes to restore friendly relations with Egypt and its ruler, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, with whom he fell out after a coup in 2013 that ousted the Turkish president’s fellow Islamist, Muhammad Morsi. Even a rapprochement with Turkey’s old enemy, Armenia, may be within reach.
The road to warmth with Saudi Arabia has been the hardest. Mr Erdogan wanted to meet Prince Muhammad during a visit to Qatar last autumn, but the plan fell through. Earlier this year he suggested a trip to Saudi Arabia. But it never happened. The stumbling block was the crown prince himself, says Ali Bakir of the Ibn Khaldon Centre at Qatar University. “For MbS this was personal.”
The crown prince found it hard to forgive Mr Erdogan’s attitude after Mr Khashoggi was killed and dismembered by a Saudi hit-squad in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. In the weeks that followed, Mr Erdogan and his government held Prince Muhammad’s feet to the fire, releasing macabre details of the murder and suggesting that the prince was directly responsible. The CIA, which was shown evidence collected by Turkish intelligence, concluded that this was indeed the case.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey were hardly the best of friends before that. They clashed over Turkey’s support for the revolutions that convulsed much of the Arab world in the Arab spring of 2011. The Gulf monarchies, except for Qatar, Turkey’s Islamist ally, hated Turkey’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they consider a terrorist group. When Saudi Arabia imposed an economic blockade on Qatar, Mr Erdogan showed his support for the smaller country by dispatching troops to a Turkish army base in Doha, the Qatari capital.
A Turkish-Saudi rapprochement now makes sense for both sides. Saudi Arabia has come to terms with Qatar and Mr Erdogan accepts that Prince Muhammad is likely to become king, despite the worldwide outcry over Mr Khashoggi’s murder. Across the region tempers have calmed.
Turkey has economic reasons for the reset, too. Its exports to Saudi Arabia plunged from nearly $3.3bn in 2019 to $265m last year, thanks to an undeclared Saudi boycott of its goods. Turkish construction companies, which have earned $15bn in Saudi Arabia since 2010, have been locked out and are keen to return. Hobbled by a weak currency and roaring inflation, which reached 61% in March, Turkey needs an injection of cash. A glut of new Saudi investments or a swap agreement with Turkey’s central bank would help. If setting aside the case of a chopped-up journalist is the price to pay, so be it.