To go beyond stoning the unknown

We have reached the eighth day of Cemal Khashoggi's disappearance within the premises of the Saudi Arabian Consulate. During this time, different scenarios have been put forward about what may have happened to Khashoggi. Some of them have been confirmed, some could not be confirmed. Some others stretched the very limits that imagination can reach.

Some reports in the press, based on police sources, also wrote that Khashoggi was brutally killed, but these have still been neither confirmed nor denied through official channels.

Meanwhile, the work of MİT, the police and the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, which are conducting the investigation with great secrecy and meticulousness, continues. The findings they reach will be presented as "information" with official seriousness and certainty.

Until then, the only certain piece of information we have at present is that Khashoggi entered the consulate but has still not come out by normal means.

At the same time, there is also the existence of a group that was in the consulate and, two hours after Khashoggi's entry, left in vehicles whose interiors could not be seen, went to the consulate residence, and from there, without staying in the rooms reserved for them for 4 days, hurriedly departed on the private planes in which they had arrived.

Until an official statement is made, there is no scenario that imagination cannot produce about this event with its many unknowns. Theoretically it is possible to say anything in that field, but beyond a certain point what is said amounts to stoning the unknown (the ghayb).

Naturally, as what is known increases, limits are placed on fantasies as well.

Of course, it is worth not letting go of caution. The possibility that Khashoggi is still alive, however slight, has not yet been theoretically exhausted.

CEMAL KHASHOGGI'S CAUSE WAS TO DEVELOP RELATIONS BETWEEN TURKEY AND SAUDI ARABIA

One more point on which caution must be maintained in this matter is the relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. In comments about Khashoggi's disappearance in the consulate building, there is no meaning or benefit in berating Saudi Arabia.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia are two peoples and two countries that are bound to one another. Their fates are tied together. Questioning what happened to Khashoggi and expecting an explanation of it from the Saudi authorities by no means signifies hostility toward Saudi Arabia.

On an Arab television channel I appeared on, in response to a question about how this incident would affect relations between the two countries, after stressing the shared destiny of the two countries I said the following:

"Even if this incident has taken place with the gravity reflected in the press, we are avoiding statements that put the whole of Saudi Arabia under suspicion.

Of course a state does not do unlawful things; if it does, it is not a state. In that case it means we are facing an occupation by gangs who use the means of a state representing its people and who see themselves as a deep state. It is imperative to cleanse the state of those elements.

Turkey has lived through such a 'deep state' experience. Those who did unlawful things in the name of the state were collared, again in the name of the state, and the state was cleansed of these elements."

Indeed, whatever level of state authority they may be using today, those who can organize all the officials in a consulate building for a job such as abducting, let alone killing, a free person are, first of all, betraying their own state and are therefore a threat to their own people and state. They are destroying the quality of their own state's being a state.

Because an organization that is not based on law and that poses a threat to the security of its own citizens cannot be called a state.

Therefore our demand is, above all, that the Saudi Arabian state expose these lawless structures that have ultimately committed a fault against Turkey and all humanity. Whatever level they may be at. We of course know that doing this is not easy for Saudi Arabia. Indeed it was not easy for Turkey to do so either, but to be a real state, or to rescue the state from the gangs that have occupied it, this is a necessity.

That is why pursuing Khashoggi's cause is never hostility to Saudi Arabia; on the contrary, it is the fulfillment of true friendship.

Indeed, one of Khashoggi's most important causes was to emphasize that the relations between Turkey and Saudi Arabia are a destiny and to develop these relations.

The statements of his that I remember most were about how much he appreciated Turkey's maturity in not reacting, no matter how much discourse and activity there was against Turkey in the official or semi-official Saudi Arabian media, and that this should continue.

What has happened to Khashoggi of course does not invalidate this cause of his; on the contrary, it requires showing extra sensitivity on this matter.