Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler took another step out of his international isolation and arrived in Ankara on Wednesday to pay his first visit to Turkey since the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s İstanbul consulate, Agence France-Presse reported.
The talks in Ankara between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan come one month before US President Joe Biden visits Riyadh for a regional summit focused on the energy crunch caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Erdoğan’s decision to revive ties with one of his biggest rivals is also driven in large part by economics and trade.
Turks’ living standards are imploding one year before a general election that poses one of the biggest challenges of Erdoğan’s two-decade rule.
Erdoğan’s Islamic-rooted government released scant details of the gruesome murder that deeply embarrassed the Saudi crown prince.
But it is now drumming up investment and central bank assistance from the very countries it opposed on ideological grounds in the wake of the Arab Spring revolts.
“I think this is probably one of the most significant visits to Ankara by a foreign leader in almost a decade,” said The Washington Institute’s Turkey specialist Soner Çağaptay.
“Erdoğan is all about Erdoğan. He’s all about winning elections and I think he has decided to kind of swallow his pride.”
The Turkish leader is scheduled to receive the crown prince at his presidential palace and then host him at a private dinner.
No press conference or signing ceremony is planned.
Analysts believe Prince Mohammed will be looking to see if he can win broader backing ahead of a possible new nuclear agreement between world powers and the Saudis’ arch-nemesis Iran.
“There is increased confidence (in Riyadh) that Ankara could be more useful in the current geopolitical environment,” the Eurasia Group said in a research note.
‘His bones would ache’
Turkey’s rapprochement with the Saudis began with an İstanbul court decision in April to break off the trial in absentia of 26 suspects accused of links to Khashoggi’s killing and to transfer the case to Riyadh.
US intelligence officials have determined that Prince Mohammed approved the plot against Khashoggi — which Riyadh denies.
The court’s decision drew protests from Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancée Hatice Cengiz. She told AFP on Wednesday that the summit was “unacceptable.”
“If Jamal had a tomb, his bones would ache,” said Cengiz.
But the İstanbul court ruling paved the way for a politically sensitive visit to Saudi Arabia by Erdoğan just three weeks later.
The kingdom’s state media ended up releasing a picture of Erdoğan hugging the crown prince, an image that created a furor in Turkey.
“He gets off the plane and hugs the killers,” fumed Turkey’s opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Ankara expects the mending of fences to help prop up the Turkish economy at a crucial stage of Erdoğan’s rule.
Lack of trust
Erdoğan’s unconventional economic approach has set off an inflationary spiral that has seen consumer prices almost double in the past year.
Analysts believe the resulting drop in Erdoğan’s public approval and depletion of state reserves mean the Turkish leader can ill afford to maintain his hostile stance toward petrodollar-rich Gulf states.
Turkey’s problems with the Saudis began when Erdoğan refused to accept Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Cairo in 2013.
The Saudis and other Arab kingdoms viewed the Brotherhood as an existential threat.
Those rivalries intensified after Turkey tried to break the nearly four-year blockade the Saudis and their allies had imposed on Qatar in 2017.
Analysts believe that Washington is watching this gradual return of regional calm with an approving nod.
“Encouraged by the United States, this rapprochement is relaxing tensions and building diplomacy across the region,” said the US-based Middle East Institute’s Turkish scholar Gönül Tol.
But Tol questioned whether Prince Mohammed was prepared to fully trust Erdoğan.
The crown prince “will not easily forget the attitude adopted by Turkey after the Khashoggi affair,” she said.