BEIRUT, Lebanon — When Turkey this week announced indictments against 20 suspects in the killing of the dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, the prospects dimmed of anyone ever being held accountable for the crime.

None of the suspects are in Turkey, and Turkish courts do not normally try defendants in absentia. Calls for international legal action have gained little traction. And human rights advocates doubt that Saudi Arabia’s justice system will ever punish the suspects charged there.

“For someone like Jamal to be killed in that way and the world remains silent?” Mr. Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancé, Hatice Cengiz, wrote in a text message to The New York Times this week. “When will the world take action after this? And how does the West defend itself? With values? Where are the values?”

Mr. Khashoggi was a prominent Saudi journalist who broke with the kingdom’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and fled to the United States, where he wrote opinion columns critical of the Saudi leadership for The Washington Post.