News / Interviews

Turkey seeks to ‘blackmail’ Saudi over Khashoggi’s case: Analyst

Friday, 26 October 2018 2:38 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 26 October 2018 3:00 PM ]

A demonstrator holds a poster picturing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a lightened candle during a gathering outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, on October 25, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

The United States and Turkey are seeking to manipulate the crisis over the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in an attempt to change the equilibrium in the Middle East, says a political analyst.

“I think the Turkish intelligence have so many information but they want to blackmail the Saudis and they push a little part after little part of the information that they have to press and blackmail the Saudi government,” Hadi Kobaysi told Press TV in an interview on Friday.

“I think that from the beginning why [did] Khashoggi go to Turkey, there is a Saudi consulate in Washington … I think that there is a game from the beginning to put the Saudi government under pressure … So from the beginning there is a game and the manipulation was from Turkey and the United States and the goal was to change the game in the Middle East,” he added.

Khashoggi – a US resident, The Washington Post columnist, and a leading critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman -- entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to obtain a document certifying he had divorced his ex-wife, but he did not leave the building.

Saudi officials originally insisted that Khashoggi had left the diplomatic mission after his paperwork was finished, but they finally admitted several days later that he had in fact been killed inside the building during "an altercation."

Several countries, including European ones, Turkey and the US, a major ally of Riyadh, have called for clarifications on the murder.