Vanishing Truth

Jamal Khashoggi was caught in the crosshairs of a tortuous power transition that will make Mohammed bin Salman the longest serving king of Saudi Arabia

- Omair Anas/Ankara

SAUDI ARABIAN JOURNALIST

Jamal Khashoggi’s dramatic disappearance in Istanbul has everything to do with his criticism of his country’s politics, which he continued as a free writer, not as a dissident. That he entered the Saudi Arabian consulate on October 2, in order to get some documents attested for his wedding with his Turkish fiancee, and was not seen coming out, is an undeniable fact. Despite claims by Saudi authorities that Khashoggi had left the consulate, they failed to provide any evidence of him exiting the consulate. One of the major fallouts of Khashoggi’s disappearance is that it could put Saudi Arabia-Turkey relations—which are already strained because of the misgivings over Turkey’s support to Qatar against the Saudi-led boycott—under further pressure.

I have been following Khashoggi’s work and I have met him twice in Istanbul. His journalism was the best example of the balance between self-imposed censorship and permitted critical space. His journalism was made for a conservative Islamic monarchy where political sensitivity and religious and social taboos often define the public sphere. He was targeted for being critical of the religious Salafi establishment, not as a French liberal, but as a moderate Muslim reformist who thought another interpretation was possible.