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Why Virginians Need to Care about the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi

RVA Staff | October 18, 2018

Topics: Assassination, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Istanbul, Jamal Khashoggi, Middle East, President Trump, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, virginia, Washington Post

Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated to silence his voice as a prominent critic of Saudi Arabia. Moving to the U.S. in June 2017, after being banned by the Saudis for criticizing President Trump, Khashoggi was eventually hired by the Washington Post in September of the same year. As a journalist in the U.S., Khashoggi became a Virginia resident and a prominent commentator on the Saudi monarchy and their disastrous war in Yemen, which has left over eight million at risk of famine.

Two weeks ago the Virginia-based journalist was lured into the Saudi Arabian diplomatic consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. He was never seen again. According to Turkish intelligence reports, he was dispatched via Saudi operatives, dismembered, and then disavowed. Only after intense public outcry from the international community and media have the Saudis hinted that it was a possible “interrogation gone wrong.” Even by today’s frayed international norms, assassinating a journalist at a diplomatic consulate is dark — so very dark.

Jamal Khashoggi

While the Saudis continue to obfuscate and misdirect (in the face of U.S. silence), the Turkish government has investigated, and released intelligence reporting that shows Khashoggi was detained within minutes of entering the consulate. Officials have then said the journalist was tortured, and that his fingers and head were eventually severed from his body. The New York Times has also reported that the Saudi operatives included a “doctor of forensics,” who helped with Khashoggi’s dismemberment. 

So very dark. 

For anyone who has ever been involved in Middle East politics, this move by Saudi Arabia should come as no real surprise. They are a fascist country run by a religious monarchy. What is surprising is that the Saudis, for the first time, are truly experiencing international isolation, pressure, and condemnation. Which is also novel, since the scourge of Sunni-based international terrorism, including al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Taliban, can be linked back to their involvement, funding, and religious ideology.

Remember that time 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers were Saudi? You should. 

Yet when you are the world’s leading global exporter of oil, buy copious amounts of weapons from the U.S. for use in a disastrous civil war in Yemen, and pretend to be the bulwark against Iranian regional aggression, then all things can apparently be forgiven. Except this — maybe. 

This is why the killing of Khashoggi has caused such a global uproar. Even Senators like Lindsey Graham have broken ranks with Trump and urged him to “sanction the hell out of Saudi Arabia,” going so far as to say that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is at the center of this diplomatic crisis, has “gotta go.”

Global executives and CEOs have also pulled out of an economic confederate scheduled for Saudi Arabia next week. The Saudi attempt to rebrand their country’s image as a moderate desert kingdom, away from the despotic oil state it actually is, has now become impossible — not that Saudi Arabia had any real desire to ever become such a country; they just wanted the international community to think they were. 

However, brutally assassinating a journalist at a diplomatic consulate calls into question basic protections which are the foundations of global law and order. Whether they’re saying it aloud or not, political and business leaders understand that allowing this kind of behavior to go unchecked puts their own interests in danger. Especially since Trump has not signaled any willingness to side against Saudi Arabia, claiming that Khashoggi “was not an American citizen.” He’s even gone so far as to connect Saudi suspicion to the outcry over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, telling the Associate Press, “You’re guilty until proven innocent.” 

So very dark.

Instead of speaking against Saudi Arabia, the president is putting U.S. arms deals with the Saudis’ (around $4bn in 2017) ahead of human rights, press freedoms, and the protections afforded by a citizen’s diplomatic consulate. Yet the president’s concern with defense contracts and U.S. economy is little more than smoke and mirrors. 

In truth, Trump doesn’t care. His antipathy towards the press is well known; his comment that Khashoggi might have been murdered by “rogue killers” supports this. And more than once on the campaign trail, he boasted about how many personal business deals he has with the Saudis. The Washington Post also found that Crown Prince Salman’s personal delegation boosted rental revenues at Trump’s New York hotel by 13 percent – the same Salman who’s denials Trump is taking at face value. 

So very dark.

Unfortunately for the international community, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who met with Trump today and traveled to Saudi Arabia to address the growing crisis, is fully bound by whatever reaction Trump thinks is appropriate in the moment. The Washington Post reported yesterday that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are now looking to “[seek] a mutually agreeable explanation for journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s death.” All of which amounts to diplomatic and political doublespeak, allowing the Saudis’ to save face, divest responsibility, and return to business as usual.  

In his final column, Khashoggi wrote, “…the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi wrote one of his most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He unfortunately is now serving an unwarranted five year prison sentence for supposed comments contrary to the Saudi establishment.” He finished this paragraph by saying, “These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence.”

For those of us concerned with anti-fascism, corruption, and how they connect to the creep of authoritarianism at a global level, Khashoggi’s words could not have proven more prescient. The U.S. (for the time being) still remains the indispensable nation that all other nations follow, warts and all. When we undermine our own fundamental values — diplomacy, press freedoms, and human rights — and exchange them in favor of a fascist religious monarchy, liberalism loses and authoritarianism wins, abroad and at home. 

Khashoggi might find it ironic that his assassination has led to the kinds of condemnation and outrage he didn’t think was possible — but only just. Early this morning, Pompeo recommended that the U.S. give Saudi a few more days to “investigate” and “let the process play out.” By then, though, there won’t be any more blood to paint over inside the consulate. 

So very dark, pitch black.

RVA Global: East and West Intersect in Istanbul

Jack Clark | September 7, 2018

Topics: Christians, East, Europe, Istanbul, Kurdistan, Lira, Muslims, RVA Global, Turkey, West

Stepping off the plane onto Turkish soil felt like being transported to another world. Like hundreds of millions of travellers before me, I had come to see Istanbul, the gateway between Europe and the East.

Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire for almost 500 years, is still a major cultural site for Muslims and Christians, although tourism has declined from a 2014 height of 42 million visitors. When I arrived, in the middle of June’s presidential election, it was against a backdrop of economic instability; inflation was soaring, causing a devaluation of the Turkish Lira. I could feel the tension, even at the airport, where guards gripped their rifles tightly as they scanned the crowd for threats.

Riding from the airport to my hotel in one of the city’s oldest district, I looked out over the skyline, littered by half-finished apartment buildings. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s face was plastered on every inch of the city. Even the sky wasn’t safe from his growing authoritarianism; planes circled the city, each trailing an image of a hopeful Erğodan on its banner.

It was clear the developers and economic elites supported his re-election, but I wondered about the millions of people who wouldn’t  benefit financially and the waning legacy of Turkey’s democratic experiment.

Istanbul street art

The taxi driver translated the posters on his cab for me, echoing the authoritarian mood; “Turkey needs a strong leader.” I wondered how a statement like that could be taken seriously. From 1994 to 2003, Erdoğan was mayor of Istanbul, and since then has been both prime minister and president – surviving a foundering economy and a failed coup d’etat in 2016. Once a strong NATO ally and a contender for the European Union, Turkey has become almost unrecognizable in a modern context. 

Although I wasn’t really here for a contemporary vision. My visit was the culmination of 27 years of yearning to see the city, raised on the stories of my father, an Orthodox Christian priest. My bedtime stories included tales of the Hagia Sophia, the great church of what was then called Constantinople, one of the Byzantine empire’s enduring achievements. In the 10th century, Vladimir the Great sent emissaries around the world in search of a faith capable of uniting the clans of Kievan Rus’, the federation he’d conquered out of the lands that would become modern Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. They found their faith at the Hagia Sophia, where the emissaries had a conversion experience while at an Eastern Orthodox service.

According to “The Tale of Bygone Years,” an early history of Kievan Rus’, the emissaries returned home and told Prince Vladimir, “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendour or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it.”

As an atheist, I didn’t have the same experience, but the sheer grandeur of the 6th-century monument was deeply impactful. It’s changed over the centuries–serving as a Roman Catholic Cathedral, an Islamic mosque, and now a secular museum–but one can still see the graffiti left on pillars by the Vikings who helped Vladimir conquer his empire. I let my hands rest on one such inscription, and felt the weight of history; someone who had been alive over a thousand years before me had stood right where I was and left his mark. 

Inside Hagia Sophia, now a museum

Istanbul is a walled city. In the 4th century, the Roman emperor Constantine moved the capital from Rome to Constantinople, which became Istanbul in 1923 when the nation shifted from a monarchy to a republic. Since the Romans, it’s been besieged by Latins, barbarian tribes, and the Seljuk Turks, who eventually morphed into the Ottoman empire. As a result, the old city is full of barricades and twisting alleys, each home fortified against its neighbor, bulwarks raised as if it were a small fortress. The graffiti in those alleys shared the voices of Turkey’s citizens over the centuries, enshrined in concrete slabs. In one neighborhood, I chuckled at the sight of a giant phallus painted onto a building; it was easy to imagine a drunken Ottoman soldier laughing at the hastily drawn phallus hundreds of years ago. Some things never change. 

One afternoon, my phone battery died. I made a wrong turn and quickly got lost. Soon, buildings gave way to half-finished developments, and it was obvious I was in the wrong place; I had drawn the attention of several Turkish men, who gestured at me as they spoke to each other. While not feeling directly threatened, I had a keen sense of how quickly things could change.

A liquor kiosk near the men suggested one way out. I didn’t know if they drank, but I purchased a couple bottles of scotch, gambling that the language of spirits would quiet my nerves and theirs. The men appreciated the chance to sit down and have a drink with a tourist, a rarity in their neighborhood. They spoke a little English,  and we sat and talked like travellers have for millennia. 

I told them about life in America and, of course, they shared their opinions about President Trump. In turn, I asked them how the Turkish economy had affected their families. They had worked hard after the 2001 economic crisis in Turkey to rebuild their savings, only to see the value cut down by further inflation. A bottle of scotch was a luxury for them; they appreciated the taste of cheap scotch in the same way Americans savor expensive whiskey. They joked, grimly: Things could always be worse, it could be Syria.

This stoicism seemed to be the Turkish character on full display. Turkey is a nation surrounded by conflict, with borders along Iraq, Iran, Greece, and Armenia. Along the Iraqi border, the Turkish army is still fighting a low-grade insurgency against the Kurdistan workers militia, while the Greeks remain antagonists since 1453, when the Ottoman empire sacked Constantinople. On the Armenian side, there are still charges of genocide against Turkey, and northern Iraq remains an unsolved geo-political conundrum. Internally, Turkey is at strife, too. Islamic State recruits, drawn to the Syrian civil war, use the nation as a crossing point, and the Turkish government has cracked down on journalists; six weeks before I arrived, 24 journalists were arrested simply for asking questions.

The walls of Istanbul

As an American abroad in 2018, I found the experience to be invaluable. I spoke with college students, Erğodan dissenters and supporters, business owners and workers. I was exposed to a way of life I could never have been privy to otherwise. In most cases, I was open about my background, and loved dispelling some illusions they held about Americans. Istanbul is a beautiful place, and to have breathed the same air and walked down the same streets which produced some of the greatest philosophical and theological works the world has ever known was as powerful as it was life-changing. Constantinople was home to the first hospital and the first healthcare system for its citizens; it was at the moral and technical forefront of its age. Seeing its present culture, neither western nor eastern, but distinct, with its own rules and norms, was fascinating.

The Islamic State considers the west to be the surviving Roman Empire, something that they are sworn to defeat. Yet places like Istanbul prove that both east and west can make a home together.

*Photos Jack Clark. Cover photo Landon Shroder.

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