On a matter of friendship and trust

I am in one of those situations in which I would dearly love to make my point by saying nothing at all, by keeping silent. Yet in a place where you cannot get your point across even by writing pages upon pages or speaking for hours, and where the point you do make can be crudely distorted, hoping to say something through silence is a somewhat overly optimistic expectation. I feel this more with every passing moment.

For me, the case of my dear friend Cemal Khashoggi, who was savagely murdered in Istanbul, was first of all a matter of friendship and of a trust (emanet), before it was a matter between countries. Given the state the affair has reached, and given what I have done and said so far, it is an unavoidable responsibility for me to render, in my own way, the now publicly owned accounting of this trust.

First of all, in taking up his cause, I always acted with the sense of a trust, in a role that had nothing to do with my political position or career. He himself had entrusted me with this trust, and in assuming this role I was not part of any political program, nor did I ever receive from anywhere any instruction about what I had done or would do, nor did anyone give such an instruction, apart from my late martyred friend with his testament.

Khashoggi had given my name to his innermost circle (mahrem) as the person they could call if anything happened to him in this country. Such a testament in itself places a person under a great responsibility. Unfortunately, I learned of this only after he had been martyred. By the time I received the phone, learning that he had entered the consulate and never come out, he had already given up his life. But neither I nor anyone else yet knew of that part of the event.

Fulfilling the requirement of the trust personally entrusted to me, I conveyed the matter to all the necessary authorities as soon as I heard of it. At first my hope and expectation was that he was alive. In the first moments, as the worst scenario I could imagine, I was focused on preventing his being seized and taken away against his will.

When the nature of the event became clear shortly afterward, I concluded that what his testament to me now required was no longer to save his life but to strive to make his cause heard by the world. There was nothing to be done for his life, but there had to be a price that his killers must pay for his unjust and savage murder. The whole world is witness that I did my utmost on this road. The killers paid, if not as much as they deserved, a price that is by no means small in scale. Of course, no definitive accounting of this can be kept. Who is the real killer, who gave the order, was the real intention this or that? After a certain point there is no meaning in debating these things. Although the collective conscience has in essence given its verdict on the matter, the court procedures could not be completed, and in the condition of this world, they cannot be.

Türkiye, with the firm stance of the President, did what no country did or could do, and demanded justice without leaving any door open to bargaining in the case. It said the culprits should be handed over to Turkish justice. The case proceeding in Türkiye continued until it reached the limit of what could be done. Because the suspects did not come to give testimony, the proceedings had been halted on the basis of the fact that, under criminal law, a verdict could not be rendered in their absence. In the case proceeding in SA, all the suspects announced that they had committed the crimes of their own free will; had the same statements been repeated in a Turkish court, even if your conscience said the exact opposite and even if you wanted a different verdict, you could not have issued one. The Khashoggi family, for its part, declared that it had forgiven even those who took on the entire crime, and so opened an ill-fated door on the Sharia's path from retribution (qisas) to pardon. Again, although conscience says otherwise, this was a path that limited the ways of the judiciary.

Admittedly, there is still an ongoing case brought by the executives of the association named Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), which Khashoggi's fiancée Hatice Cengiz and the late Khashoggi founded in the US shortly before his martyrdom. We do not know what its outcome will be.

When the Turkish judiciary announced that it had accepted the request to transfer the case to SA, the only thing I could say to those who called to ask my view was that I was "saddened." Because, once again, as from the very beginning, I did not know what was going on in the process at this stage either. As a friend of Khashoggi who found myself in the middle of this case, I was never officially informed by any official authority, nor were my views ever sought. Apart from the prosecutor's turning to my testimony at one point, no one was curious about my views or about what I knew regarding the nature of our relationship. That I was ahead of everyone in this matter rested not on any official duty but entirely on my personal bond of rights and obligations with Khashoggi.

Therefore, despite the Khashoggi affair, I am entirely outside the matter regarding the rapprochement with SA as well. Truthfully, if I had some involvement in the matter, in this rapprochement, apart from my dear friend who was martyred, I would of course ask about the situation of some oppressed people who have been unjustly imprisoned for years merely on the grounds that they had WhatsApp correspondence with me personally, and would demand their release. I would also want to ask about the situation of the hundreds of scholars and intellectuals of the Islamic world, each more valuable than the last, the pride of the Muslim world, who have likewise been lying in prison for years unjustly, under very harsh conditions despite their age and illnesses.

Meanwhile, four years have passed with the judiciary in this condition. Much has changed in the world in the meantime, is changing, and a series of developments is taking place. The distances that have arisen between Türkiye and the Arab world, for one reason or another, create a situation of encirclement around Türkiye and around the Islamic world. Greece, with the EU countries at its back, has found an unparalleled opportunity for the distances between Türkiye and the Arab world to widen further, and dares to defy Türkiye from this open distance.

I know how sensitive the esteemed President, who can, when the time comes, risk standing against the entire world for justice, is about looking after the interests of Türkiye and the entire Islamic world; I have been one of the closest witnesses to this for years, and indeed the whole nation and even the whole Islamic world is witness to it. I believe and trust that in this matter he has weighed all the factors in the most just way for Türkiye and for the Islamic world. Even in the Islamic world, which holds great respect and admiration for Türkiye and Erdoğan because of their stance both on the Khashoggi matter and in the Arab counter-revolution processes, there is an expectation of a move that, despite all the disputes between them, will melt the ice between Türkiye and the Arab world and normalize relations. This expectation is not simply a need of Türkiye; it is a need of the entire Islamic world. Because of the rift between them, there is today a serious problem of political vacuum (siyasetsizlik) in the Islamic world. Precisely for this reason, no contradiction is seen between the openings now being made and the earlier principled stances; on the contrary, these normalization steps have stirred hopes and excitement.

As for my own case regarding my friend, it of course remains. Whatever the courts and politics may say, I will continue to pursue my claim before God. He gives the most beautiful and most just verdict.

Meanwhile, it is plain as day that the expectation of sharp radicalism from him, and of course from me, in this matter, on the part of those who stood by Erdoğan neither in the Khashoggi matter nor in any case, has nothing to do with either justice or the interest of the country. We have no answer to give to these jackal-like provocations, nor a second of time to spend on them, nor the foolishness to attach the slightest value to them.