Why Won't Turkey Release the Khashoggi Tapes?

[oberliner]

The soundtrack to Jamal Khashoggi’s beating, vivisection, and murder lasts just seven minutes, according to Turkish officials who spoke anonymously to several outlets yesterday. By the end of the recording, the screams have subsided, and Khashoggi is dead, although his alleged killer—a Saudi doctor named Salah Muhammed al-Tubaigy—must have continued sawing away at his limbs for some time after. (It takes about two minutes to saw through a human femur with a manual bone saw, and longer than that to dissect the soft tissue around it.)

I hope never to hear this tape. But I want someone to hear it, and soon. The Turkish officials have leaked details of this operation with frustrating caginess. They promise that the tapes exist, and that they were recorded with Khashoggi’s own Apple Watch. They have shared their account of the tapes with journalists and foreign powers, including the United States—but they have not shared the tapes themselves. It’s time for them to end the steady drip of leaks and reveal the source material. By the descriptions we’ve heard so far, that material must be awfully difficult to fake. You can’t exactly go to Craigslist to hire a Jamal Khashoggi impersonator to scream in Saudi dialect as if his fingers are being chopped off.

The release of the recording need not be to the general public. It has been described in detail to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and to government-friendly media from Turkey and Qatar. Play it for those same reporters, and for the ambassadors or delegated officials from any two dozen countries. The mystery of the fate of Khashoggi, and perhaps also of the complicity of Saudi officials like the consul general, Mohammad al-Otaibi, will be resolved in minutes.

Failure to release the tapes does not mean they do not exist. Turkey has caught a regional rival in a compromising position—with no alibi or coherent strategy to defend itself. By letting one detail slip each day, titrating the dosage of grotesquerie to prolong the headlines, it has turned the likely torture of Khashoggi into a torture of another sort for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). David Ignatius reported yesterday that MbS has been in a “rage” and a “funk” for days. Even before these calamitous last weeks, rumors circulated in the kingdom of MbS’s possible ouster or assassination. Turkey has prolonged the news cycle to nourish the perception that MbS is crazy and murderous. As if to illustrate how terrible his options are, CNN reported that MbS will acknowledge Khashoggi’s death at the hands of his security services but will attribute it to “rogue” elements. That excuse will, if anyone believes it, replace the perception that he is a crazy murderer with the perception that he is surrounded by crazy murderers he is unable to restrain, potentially including even his own senior diplomats, intelligence officers, pilots, and physicians.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi-murder-tapes/573295/

[guillaumeb]

1. Hoping to profit from not releasing them?

Perhaps the Turks want US support for their own ongoing battle with the Kurds.

[oberliner]

2. That is an interesting theory

But the longer they draw it out, the less profit they will accrue, in my view.

[SCantiGOP]

3. A day or so after the story broke

I heard that Turkey would be reluctant to release the proof because they did not want anyone to know how they bug embassies. Apparently, most embassies - in Turkey and elsewhere - are bugged.

[oberliner]

4. That makes sense

I wonder if it will ever be released with that being the case.

[SCantiGOP]

5. I bet it will come out eventually

I’m not ghoulish enough to want to hear it myself, but it would damage Trump because of his initial reaction to the story.

[Igel]

7. No, it doesn't. At least not without saying Turkey's lying.

And if they're lying about one thing, why not others?

If they recorded it with Khashoggi's Apple Watch, then it's unlikely that's a standard method that they've used for the last few months in bugging the consulate. Unless Khashoggi was there on a frequent basis.

Now, if they've found a way to make *any* Apple Watch do the Turkish security forces' bidding and turn on as a transmitter, then there's another issue.

People are trying to find reasons to justify Turkey. I see no reason to defend or justify either.

[oberliner]

8. It made sense to me

Thanks for sharing that info. I guess I haven't been following the specifics as closely as I should.

[targetpractice]

6. I question an Apple Watch as the method for recording. They don't work like that...

Here's an article...

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/15/khashoggi-apple-watch-recording-in-saudi-embassy-nearly-impossible.html

[oberliner]

9. So what is your take on this?

[targetpractice]

11. Maybe the consulate was bugged?

I am an Apple product super fan, and I have been trying to figure out how this might work as reported. I can't find an app that streams directly from the watch to iCloud. The watch would need to be in range of its paired iPhone to sync a recording to iCloud because the Apple Watch with cellular LTE is not supported in Turkey. I am assuming that any Apple Watch or iPhone on Khashoggi would have disappeared with the body.

[EX500rider]

10. Yeah the BBC came to the same conclusion..

...basically he was out of Bluetooth range of his cel his GF had and the watch won't work by itself on Turkish networks.

[UniteFightBack]

12. Make the Saudi's take a position (The USA too) ..like this fight bullshit and then Turkey can

prove they are liars.