Khashoggi's spirit greets MBS wherever he goes

The G20 Summit held in Argentina was the first trip abroad for Saudi Crown Prince MBS in the two months since the Khashoggi affair. Of course, not counting the visit he made a week earlier to his friend MBZ in BAE.

People from every quarter, first of all himself, awaited these visits with curiosity, because they would make it possible to gauge what kind of place MBS would have in the international community after and under the effect of the Khashoggi affair. For since the hour of the murder, as the development of events pointed to him as the natural and strongest suspect of the murder, MBS naturally entered a self-isolating process.

Just as no one sees any possibility that those who committed this savage murder did so without his knowledge, the details gradually laid out about the incident both reinforce this conviction and heighten the sense of horror about the incident.

According to the confirmed information, Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate in 7.5 minutes. But for those who killed him or those who ordered his killing, a terrible nightmare that has not ended for two months continues.

To those who expressed the worry that this murder would in the end be profitable to the perpetrator, we had asked: "What profit are you talking about?" Look, since the moment the Khashoggi murder came to light, its killers die every day with a punishment that began and never ends. The isolation they face in the world, the way people look at them and flee from them in every nook and corner, the fact that many times the billions of dollars they spent to create a perception will not suffice from now on to clean their perception, is only the first installment of the punishment meted out for this savage murder. We have seen enough in the last two months that the Khashoggi murder will in no way be profitable to the one who did it and the one who had it done.

What was most curious we saw in the treatment MBS received before and after Argentina. It is as if Khashoggi's spirit greets MBS wherever he goes.

Some regarded it as the world's shame that MBS, while under the accusation of such a murder, could brazenly go on such a trip. Truthfully, even if the world has many shames on other matters, the stance the world has displayed on this matter is hopeful. Of course, that MBS showed the courage to go on such a trip is a separate matter.

MBS probably thought a great deal about whether to go on this trip, and concluded in the end that self-isolation would ultimately mean accepting the position assigned to him. And as the most effective way of not accepting the accusations, he probably thought that going out among people as if nothing had happened and thereby giving the message that he is at ease was the answer.

For this he began his trip from the places he trusts most. From Sisi's Egypt, whose coup and inhuman practices after the coup he supports.

We say "Sisi's Egypt" because there is another, real Egypt there, and that Egypt reacted very harshly to this visit. Of course, there is no need to say that Sisi, who regards MBS as his own benefactor, welcomed him with an enthusiastic ceremony, exactly as he wanted.

MBS tried to find consolation in this image and continued on his way to Tunisia. Here too, although he was welcomed by senior state officials in a manner close to what he wanted, the people's protests and the reaction shown with banners saying "you are not welcome, and you did not bring joy" set the real seal on his visit.

At the G20 summit, on the other hand, scenes in which, apart from Putin, no world leader was willing to greet him, took care not to appear in the same frame with him, and left him alone by ignoring him summarized his position. These scenes were recorded and served up by world media with great interest and in every detail. These experiences probably made him wish he had never come to Argentina, where he had come in search of normalization and legitimacy.

In fact, with this common reaction the G20 leaders' summit was declaring that it saw him as clearly guilty in the Khashoggi incident. Perhaps the evidence that he himself ordered the murder has not yet been conclusively presented, but the evidence and data at hand leave no room whatsoever for the possibility that this murder was committed without his knowledge. The great majority of the leaders attending the G20 showed, with the distance they put, that they had almost reached a verdict on this knowledge. Even Trump clearly shrank from showing him any warmth in this situation.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for his part, by saying that he did not find MBS's statements regarding the murder sufficient, rejected his self-exonerating efforts so far. Even so, as always, Erdoğan put a distance between MBS and Saudi Arabia, and did not neglect to emphasize that even if justice reached MBS, its being done would be in Saudi Arabia's favor and not against it, and that Saudi Arabia could emerge from this matter only by becoming stronger in this way.

It was announced that MBS, who, in Egypt, Tunisia and Argentina, where he went to seek legitimacy and wash away the bloodstain upon him, found not what he hoped for but the exact opposite, would stop by Algeria and Mauritania on his return. Both countries are ones where Saudi Arabia's influence has been strong in the past and today. Mauritania in particular was a country that, unable to break Saudi Arabia in the Qatar crisis, sided with the boycott countries. MBS may have wanted to find consolation in a splendid reception there, but already the people of Mauritania have poured into the streets and begun to say that they do not want him in their country. The distance between the governments and the people is clearly seen here too.

In Algeria too, as reactions to MBS's arrival grow like an avalanche, Saudi Arabia's role in the process of the coup against democracy that took place in Algeria in the early nineties and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is being recalled. Khashoggi is in pursuit.

It seems that the punishment being effectively meted out because of the Khashoggi murder goes far beyond being a punishment for the killing of a single person. It opens the file of a serial murder, committed and still being committed in the world and in the Middle East, which until now was thought to have been profitable to the perpetrators and which has become systematic.

As the files are opened, the doors of change open too.