The furore over the disappearance, and presumed murder, of Jamal Khashoggi, a high-profile critic of the Saudi regime, has drawn two of the Middle East’s most ruthless leaders into direct confrontation. Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, have much in common, not least being accustomed to getting their own way.

As enemies of free speech and a free press, Bin Salman and Erdoğan also share a dislike of brave people such as Khashoggi who speak up and hold powerful autocrats to account. Ironically, it is the fate of this liberal journalist that has sparked a crisis between these too most illiberal figures. Relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey were already strained by differences over Syria, Riyadh’s cold war with Qatar and Ankara’s alliance with Iran. Now it is all coming to a head.

Jamal Khashoggi: Labour slams government’s response as ‘too little, too late’ Read more

Erdoğan, foremost leader of a modern Islamist revival that has rolled back Turkey’s secularist traditions, has long portrayed himself a champion for the Muslim world. He supported the Arab spring revolts and was quick to travel to Egypt after the defenestration of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Erdoğan condemned the subsequent overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government and has distanced Turkey from Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s military-backed regime.

After attempting a rapprochement with Israel as part of an expansionist foreign policy known as neo-Ottomanism, ever-choleric Erdoğan fell out with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over its mistreatment of the Palestinians. More recently, Erdoğan has engaged in multiple disputes with the US over its support for Kurdish forces in Syria, alleged complicity in a 2016 army coup and Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Saudi isolation grows over Khashoggi disappearance Read more

Bin Salman sees himself as an international standard-bearer, too, as a future king whose country guards Islam’s holiest shrines. But his instinct is to crush moves towards greater democracy at home and across the Arab world, exemplified by the brutal Saudi military intervention in Bahrain. He has cosied up to Trump, moved closer to Israel and joined forces with both to punish Iran. To this end, he launched the disastrous intervention in Yemen and it is Bin Salman who should one day be asked to answer for war crimes perpetrated there.

Any illusions the western democracies may have held about the true nature of Erdoğan’s leadership – intolerant, divisive, confrontational and oppressive – have been largely dispelled as he has tightened his personal grip on Turkey over nearly two decades. Bin Salman, a younger man whose rise to prominence is more recent, is still viewed in some quarters as a reformer. This misapprehension arises from his very limited social and economic reforms, which have been mis-sold around the world by expensive PR spin.

Khashoggi affair sets a high-stakes challenge for the Saudis' allies Read more

What the Khashoggi affair cruelly demonstrates is that the Saudi regime’s unaccountable, repressive political control of the public sphere has in fact been expanded, reinforced and emboldened. Bin Salman has become a dictator in all but name. He plainly feels he can do whatever he likes, with impunity, and that the western world, misled by the US, will tamely acquiesce, primarily out of economic and strategic self-interest. After all, this is what has been happening for decades.

This policy of appeasing and facilitating a regime that shows contempt for basic western values was always a mistake, as we have argued here many times. Boycotting investment conferences and questioning the Saudi ambassador over tea is nowhere near enough. Selling weaponry used to kill Yemeni children, and ignoring the jailing of Saudi women’s rights campaigners, is morally insupportable. So, too, is the apparent gruesome murder of an innocent man whose only offence was to speak his mind.

Despite their differences, Erdoğan, eventually, will probably agree some kind of grubby backdoor trade-off with Bin Salman. It’s what unscrupulous dictators do. But for the west, the Khashoggi affair is a turning point – and the British government, and its allies, must recognise it as such.