Through the cooperation of those in a rush to be acquitted and those in pursuit of hunting…

What has befallen Cemal Khashoggi after he entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul has become one of the most important items on the world's agenda. As we said before, this has quickly taken the Khashoggi affair out of being a matter between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The matter has now turned into one between the whole world's public opinion and public law, on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia on the other.

Turkey, given such a grave violation within its sovereign borders, is of course the primary follower of the case. That Khashoggi is not its own citizen does not require it to remain indifferent to his vanishing, before everyone's eyes, within the boundaries of his own country's consulate.

After all, Khashoggi reached the boundaries of the Saudi consulate safe and sound. From his own country's territory, however, he has so far been unable to come out safe and sound.

Now, when we present this reality as the only clear and certain piece of evidence shared with the public so far, some people immediately try to claim that we are making light of the matter by saying that we have nothing in hand.

Have some conscience.

Do you find this evidence too little?

Never mind other evidence; even if we focus on this evidence alone, you can lift from it the gravity of the matter and all the veils of secrecy surrounding it. Even without needing any other scenario, the information that Khashoggi entered the consulate and has still not come out by normal means is a firm enough ground for the matter to be clarified.

Moreover, this fact leaves no doubt as to who bears responsibility for Khashoggi's disappearance. What importance do the words of the Saudi media, which knows no limit in talking nonsense out of a defensive psychology, have? They continue to repeat, in a delirious mode and with the legion army of trolls they have deployed, the line "he went in and came out, the rest is Turkey's responsibility." Of course, neither any evidence nor any footage can be shown of how he came out.

On the occasion of the Khashoggi affair we are in fact living once more, in the most bitter way, one more experience belonging to human reality: no one has any aim or goal of listening to the truth. Everyone hears among the words spoken what they have already decided to hear. They display complete deafness toward the rest, and, not hearing, invent what they want to hear.

What ears are there to hear among trolls? They exist in any case not to hear something but to invent and spread. That is their job.

In the Khashoggi case, too, it is no surprise to see how hastily people have rushed to a conclusion from the very beginning. In the meantime you have to affiliate yourself with one of two opposing verdicts, otherwise you can become the target of both sides. Your cautious and measured sentences are immediately written off by both sides as belonging to the opposing side, and in an instant you find yourself caught between two fires.

My statement "I have no definitive information that Khashoggi was killed" is suddenly published on Al Arabiya or in the official Saudi media as though I were announcing that "Khashoggi has not died." Yet I am only saying that "I" have no information or evidence that he died. This does not mean that the judicial and security authorities do not have it. Frankly, since I truly do not know what evidence the judicial and security authorities have, I am not in a position to confirm or refute the information reflected in the press on this matter. Until an official statement is made, nothing could be more natural than my position being like this.

I say "At this stage I am not accusing anyone, nor can I accuse the Saudi state," and strangely, the Saudi media again carries it as a headline that I said "The Saudis cannot be accused in any way, they are innocent in this affair." Yet in the following part of the very same sentence I say "before the investigation is completed, before all available data are gathered and laid out, we cannot legally accuse the Saudi side or anyone else."

While a part of the Saudi media jumps on this matter in this way in a rush to be cleared, on our side too these cautious words of ours are read, in a more radical manner, as our effort to clear Saudi Arabia of this affair. One is in a rush to be cleared, the other is out to fish in troubled waters.

For God's sake, in precisely this context, what part of saying "we cannot accuse anyone during the investigation stage" means clearing Saudi Arabia or any other suspect? Whose hands hold what definitive evidence that they have reached this verdict and even set about carrying out the sentence?

The mentality on display is one of sheer lynching and of "don't let them talk, shoot," and the fact that this mentality has swelled so much on social media is truly not a good omen for the country.

In the end, a very important fact that needs explaining remains unexplained, and we say this is enough: "Khashoggi entered the consulate but could not come out; where did he go?" This reality already makes all the consulate officials, and the 15 people who came from Saudi Arabia that night, prime suspects, but does not yet make them convicts.

Since we will not assume that these people acted on their own, the limits of the investigation will extend to all the limits that the law makes possible.

While the Saudi media on the one hand hastily tries to clear itself by pinning its hopes on the words it attributes to me in this way, on the other it continues its effort to discredit my person (together with Turan Kışlakçı). Let them write whatever scenarios they want from the photographs circulating on social media. Nothing they do will prevent us from fulfilling the requirements of the trust Khashoggi placed upon our shoulders as he entered the consulate; no one will be able to keep us from it.