Mike Pompeo Meets Turkish President to Discuss Saudi Journalist’s Fate

ISTANBUL — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Wednesday with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, trying to resolve the international uproar over the alleged killing of a journalist inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, and said that Saudi officials had promised consequences for anyone — even a member of the royal family — found responsible.

Pompeo arrived in Ankara, the Turkish capital, as a barrage of new information leaked by unidentified Turkish officials appeared in news outlets, giving gruesome details of what they say are audio recordings of Jamal Khashoggi being assaulted, tortured, killed and dismembered inside the consulate two weeks ago.

After meeting Tuesday with top Saudi officials, including King Salman and Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Pompeo told reporters early Wednesday before leaving Riyadh, the Saudi capital: “They made a commitment to hold anyone connected to any wrongdoing that may be found accountable for that. Whether they are a senior officer or official, they promised accountability.”

Asked if that included members of the royal family, he said, “They made no exceptions to who they would hold accountable.”

Several of the people identified by Turkish officials as being among the Saudis who carried out the killing have ties to the crown prince, who is considered the power behind the throne, and Western intelligence officials say that such an operation would have required his blessing. The Turks contend that a team of Saudi officials flew to Istanbul, killed Khashoggi and disposed of his body, and left the country hours after they arrived.

Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government who wrote columns for The Washington Post, entered the consulate Oct. 2 for a meeting to obtain a document confirming his divorce, to allow him to marry his Turkish fiancée the next day. Saudi officials have said he walked out of the building, safe and sound, but no evidence of that has been made public.

Erdogan has not publicly accused Saudi Arabia of abducting or killing Khashoggi, but has demanded answers. A joint Saudi-Turkish investigation has begun work and investigators spent hours searching inside the consulate building Monday night. They have also requested access to search the consulate’s vehicles and the consul’s personal residence.

On Tuesday, Erdogan said that a focus of the investigation was the possibility that parts of the consulate had been repainted to hide evidence.

In a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast Sunday, President Donald Trump vowed “severe punishment” if the Saudis were responsible for Khashoggi’s disappearance, and he has said he was sending Pompeo to Saudi Arabia to get to the bottom of the matter. But this week, he has emphasized Saudi denials.

Pompeo met with Erdogan for 40 minutes at Ankara’s airport Wednesday morning, along with Turkey’s intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan; Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu; and the national security adviser, Ibrahim Kalin. Pompeo later held a separate meeting with Cavusoglu, and he flew out immediately after without making any comment to the news media.

Cavusoglu described the meeting, which covered the case of Khashoggi among other issues, as useful and fruitful. “Pompeo said he relayed Trump’s thoughts and concerns to Riyadh,” he said. “We had said before that Saudis should cooperate with us.”

Cavusoglu said the Turkish prosecutor was conducting an expansive investigation into the episode. But he added that Saudi officials had appeared to obstruct investigators seeking to gain access to the consul’s residence Tuesday because members of the consul’s family were present.

Investigators would continue to try to gain access, he added. The consul, Mohammad al-Otaibi, left Turkey for Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

U.S. officials have said that the Saudis were preparing to say that Khashoggi was killed accidentally during an interrogation, but there has been no such admission so far.

Turkey has sought U.S. help in getting answers from Saudi Arabia about Khashoggi’s fate, but despite agreeing to conduct a joint investigation, after Salman and Erdogan spoke by phone Sunday, the two sides remain poles apart. Saudi leaders continue to deny hurting Khashoggi, and Turkish officials remains firm in their insistence that he was killed.

The pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak reported Wednesday that it had listened to an audio recording apparently made inside the consulate of the minutes that Khashoggi met his end and said there was more than one recording. Other news organizations reported on descriptions of the recordings provided by Turkish officials.

In one of the recordings, Otaibi, is heard pleading with the perpetrators to conduct the assault outside the consulate, Yeni Safak reported.

“Do this outside. You will put me in trouble,” the newspaper quotes the consul as saying. “'If you want to live, shut up!’ is the response,” it added.