The court has decided to stay the proceedings of the trial of 26 defendants in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and transfer the file to Saudi Arabia.

The prosecutor's office decided to stop the case and asked for the necessary procedural actions to be taken to ensure the transfer of the proceedings to the judicial authorities of Saudi Arabia. Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdağ, who made a statement on the subject, said that they approached the transfer of the case positively.

The transfer of the Khashoggi murder case to Saudi Arabia has been criticised as "handing the sentencing to the murderer."

AHMET ŞIK: THE CASE HAS BEEN SOLD

Workers' Party of Turkey (TIP) MP and journalist Ahmet Şık claimed that the case of the Saudi Journalist was sold for 50 million dollars before the transfer to Riyadh.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Khashoggi was killed in the Consulate General of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. It was later revealed that Khashoggi was killed by a team sent from Saudi Arabia.

In a statement in 2019, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman admitted that the ones who murdered Khashoggi were under his commandment but denied that he was aware of the murder. Saudi officials claimed that the perpetrators of the murder were people who did so without the administration's knowledge and abused their power.

WHAT DID ERDOĞAN SAY?

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had two remarkable statements regarding the Khashoggi case.

The first of these came in 2018, where he called Khashoggi a "martyr."

He said: "Jemal Khashoggi, unfortunately, was a victim of a vile operation at the Consulate General. He was martyred. His father and son called us from Saudi Arabia, we told everything we knew.

“The king told me, 'We arrested 18 people' and the number soon rose to 22. Arresting is not the end. What was the punishment for them? The foreign minister made a statement the other day that they won’t send their citizens to Turkey.

“The same person used the following expression: ‘This was done with local collaborators.’ I asked them ‘who are those collaborators?​’ They couldn't explain and then they denied it. The Crown Prince said that Khashoggi left the consulate general.

“They think the world is fooled, they think the people are fools. The people of this nation are not fools, but know how to hold the perpetrators accountable.

“If you cannot prosecute, since Istanbul is the place where the crime was committed, Istanbul courts should judge it according to international law. Submit it and we'll judge."

There were also remarkable details in the article by the AKP leader on Khashoggi. He wrote in the Washington Post: "The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was a columnist for the Washington Post, can be considered the biggest and most controversial event of the 21st century after the terror attack on September 11th.

“Because no event since September 11th has threatened the international order so much or defied the rules accepted by the world. The fact that we know only limited information about the murder even after a year is a sad fact that the international community should think about. Whether or not all aspects of the Saudi journalist's death are illuminated will determine what kind of world our children will live in.

“My management has adopted a policy of full transparency in this regard from the very first day. In the past year, our intelligence and security services, diplomats and prosecutors cooperated with their counterparts as followers on the issue. They have taken the necessary steps to enlighten the national and international public opinion.

“In this context, we shared the evidence we have with countries including the United States of America, the Russian Federation, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, as well as Saudi Arabia. Additionally, we contributed to the investigation of United Nations Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard.

“Finally, we made attempts in Saudi Arabia to send Khashoggi's killers to Turkey, where the crime was committed. Those who murdered Jamal Khashoggi in the Consulate General of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul and dismembered his body, did so not for their state and nation, but served the interests of a gang nestled within the Saudi Arabian state.

“If we believed in the contrary, we could consider the incident as a bilateral conflict. However, we see the Khashoggi murder as a matter of justice, not politics. We maintain our belief that justice will only be served by [Turkish] national and international courts.

“The Khashoggi assassination is alarming, not only because of its humanitarian dimension but also because of the abuse of the principle of diplomatic immunity. The murderers travelling with diplomatic passports, turning a diplomatic building into a crime scene, and Saudi Arabia's top diplomat in Istanbul trying to cover it up, set a very dangerous precedent. Perhaps even more dangerous is that the murderers continue their lives in their own country without any punishment." (EVRENSEL DAILY)