Can an image lost to murder be found on football pitches?

Four and a half months have passed since the Khashoggi murder. To this day, nothing positive has come from Saudi Arabia in response to the sincere and exemplary efforts Turkey has made to shed light on the murder. So much so that this reluctance and inaction in clarifying the murder in fact shows that all the allegations in circulation about the murder have been admitted.

Normally Saudi Arabia is a country known for never staying silent about any allegation made about itself and for reacting harshly, setting very heavy sanctions in motion against those who voice opposing claims or discourses.

Let us recall what a critical tweet from the Canadian Prime Minister, which could actually be considered relatively mild, about human rights violations in Saudi Arabia led to before the Khashoggi murder. Saudi Arabia had suspended all its diplomatic relations with Canada.

Yet throughout the whole public investigation of the Khashoggi murder, although Saudi Arabia is exposed to criticisms, accusations and charges of a kind that no country in its history has ever faced, it has sunk into complete silence on the matter. If this silence is not an admission, what is?

The allegation that MBS was the instigator of the murder is seen as a necessary consequence of the nature and logic of the event, and it is being voiced. MBS of course does not utter a sentence accepting it, and even denies it, but they have in their hands all the sources of information that could turn the denial into proof, the triggermen of the murder, and all of these triggermen's movements and relations.

Even if there is a small possibility that it was not MBS, that is, that the instigator was someone else, whoever it may be, they have in their hands the information sufficient to reveal this immediately. Answering where the body is lies in their hands. There is a local collaborator they mention; who this is, where he is, at what level cooperation was carried out with him, finding and revealing all the details is also in their hands.

That they are not trying to provide the answers to all these questions that the public asks with curiosity in fact means that the instigator is being protected, and therefore that all the allegations about the murder are being tacitly accepted. This situation has now been decided in the opinion and conscience of the whole world, leaving no room for doubt. The rest is a matter for the court.

As for the prestige that MBS lost as the suspected perpetrator of the most merciless, most savage murder imaginable in the world, he is trying to regain it and make up for the damage not by defending himself against the accusations or trying to clear his name, but by other ways.

On his trips to Pakistan and India these days he signs very comprehensive cooperation agreements, but encounters protests wherever he goes. Large crowds gathered in India protest MBS both over the Khashoggi murder and over the human rights violations in Yemen, and also over the scholars held arbitrarily in his own country's prisons, deprived of every human right. Saudi Arabia's image had never been this bad. Saudi Arabia had never before been the subject of criticism and protests so openly, by the masses.

Despite this, MBS tries to recover the lost image elsewhere, but desperately.

One way is football. The latest claim, that he offered 4.9 billion dollars to buy the English football club Manchester United, was published in The Sun newspaper. Although this meeting was denied from Riyadh, The Sun newspaper insisted on its claim that approximately 4.9 billion dollars had been offered to the club's owners, the American Glazer family.

The Bin Zayed family, rulers of the BAE, the Crown Prince's most important ally, also owns another Premier League side, Manchester City.

In fact, how far will the glossy, gilded image work attempted through football go toward covering up the human rights violations of both countries, which are dragging along the ground? Let us ask this as well now.

Truthfully, the addressee of this question is world public opinion, which serves up on a platter the whitewashing of countries with so many human rights violations through this kind of image work that they can afford with the power of money. How does this mechanism work? It is a known fact that football is used as a way of laundering dirty money. Here it is a matter of whitewashing pitch-black records, murders, massacres, and all the crimes committed against democracy, humanity and human rights.

True, football has such a role, but it also has another dimension, of being the only remaining medium through which people express all their criticisms, feelings and thoughts. For football is never just football. What happened at the Asian Cup matches played in the BAE in recent days was very instructive.

The BAE, which has been in political hostility with Qatar from the start, tried to make life difficult for it in every way, for example tried to block its participation altogether, and when it failed, tried to turn the BAE pitch into a heavy away atmosphere against it through stands, cheerleading games, flag and pennant games. For example, in the final it encouraged Japan, which was playing against Qatar, to support its own fans. Qatar national team fans were prevented from carrying their own flags, etc.

Despite this, these provocations did not work, even among the BAE's own people, especially Kuwait and Oman. The Qatar national team, voicing all the feelings of the peoples in all the tensions among the Gulf countries, broke the tape and became champions.

The championship the Qatar national team reached by also beating the BAE national team 4-0 made even the president of the BAE Football Association, Marwan bin Ghulaita, a target of criticism. The president's answer to the criticism he faced over my BAE national team's defeat, conceding 4 goals to the enemy team Qatar, was very telling: "I do not know failure in my life, but I do know God not granting success."

Football is not just football, of course, and it is not at all a place where you can find the prestige you have lost in the field of humanity.