On October 2, 2018, the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered his country’s consulate in Istanbul, while his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, waited outside. Khashoggi and Cengiz, a Turkish graduate student, planned to marry the next day, and Khashoggi needed a document from the Saudi consulate. Khashoggi never left the consulate; he was murdered and dismembered by a Saudi hit squad, which American and foreign intelligence agencies believe was sent to Turkey by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Cengiz has not spoken much in public, but she recently gave remarks to the United Nations about the importance of continuing to investigate the murder. I recently spoke by phone with Cengiz, who lives in Istanbul and speaks a good bit of English, but who felt more comfortable talking in Turkish, with the help of an interpreter. Her answers have been translated into English, and our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
You once described Jamal as being “of the Palace.” What were you trying to say?
I meant that he was a journalist close to the Palace. As you know, the Khashoggi family is one of the most prominent families in Saudi Arabia. Jamal’s grandfathers were medical doctors in the Palace. For this reason, after he started his career as a journalist, he also worked as an adviser and undersecretary to a few Saudi princes, in England and America. What I meant by “he was not an outsider” was that he was close to the Saudi government.
When did you meet Jamal, and how much was politics a part of your bond?
He was among the writers that I, as a researcher focussed on the Middle East, had been following for five years or so. When I realized that he was at a conference I was attending about this topic, in Istanbul, in May, 2018, I wanted to meet him. I went over to him and introduced myself. I said that I was a researcher specializing in Gulf countries, and that I wanted to hold an interview with him. I did not know how he would receive this idea, since I was only a researcher, but he was humble enough to accept my request. Then I had a short interview with him—twenty-six minutes long. Later on, I published this interview for the first time in a book that came out in Turkey.
On that day, I asked him about the agenda in Saudi Arabia—whether the political transformation there, which was being displayed as reform, would bring about serious change. Seen from the outside, some things seemed to be developing quickly, but at the same time there were many detentions, and so on. People who were very close to the Palace—emirs, princes, prominent academics, businessmen—were put under custody. I posed questions to Jamal about this process, and he answered them.
In return, he asked me questions about Turkish politics, and also about elections—there were elections in Turkey at that time. He asked how I, as a young person, would rate the actions of the A.K.P. When I was answering, rather than a dialogue between a researcher and a writer, it felt just like two people from different countries advocating the same things. We formed a kind of consensus during that interview. We each felt a connection with the other, and Jamal asked to see me again, during his next visit to Istanbul. Then, we met again and our relationship progressed.
Was there some moment or some event that caused his thinking about Mohammad bin Salman and Saudi leadership to change dramatically?
He said that there were some favorable developments but that they were not taking place in normal due course. In other words, the country significantly increased pressure on groups who were thinking differently, such as journalists, like him, and also academics, intellectuals, etc., and the pressure was more severe on them compared to the past. He expressed that, during this transformation that Saudi Arabia was undergoing, there was a spectre of fear for different voices or dissident opinions, and that the atmosphere was not comfortable. Many of his friends and colleagues were in jail or in custody, due to tweets or comments they posted about the crisis with Qatar, say, or other various reasons. Because he could not predict just how these rapid and profound developments would proceed, and because he had such serious concerns about them, he decided to leave his country. I asked him a question on this matter. “Your country is a kingdom. There has been no pure democracy in the history of Saudi Arabia. When could you ever criticize the administration? How often could you express your opinion in the past, to declare that today you do not have the same liberties?”
In response, he told me that there has been no pressure as high as at that moment. Before, people criticizing the government were warned or suspended from office temporarily, but eventually they were reinstated. He added that there had never been so many detentions or imprisonments, and for so many years, without any grounds or pretext—at the very least, it had never been so serious and intimidating, and he was watching it all with fear and concern.
Did Jamal ever show fear to you?
He wanted to leave the country because he was concerned about the possibility of incarceration or detention if he continued to stay. Rather than having further fear or concerns, he left Saudi Arabia, in an effort to seek a platform where he could more freely express his opinions. Of course, if everything in his country had been rosy, he would not have left. I am sure he carried concerns, carried fears, because he said to me, “At this age, I do not want to die in a prison.”
This is not something new. He always underlined the fact that his country was undergoing a transformation, and that this process was very painful, and he always communicated this, to try to help his country and the ongoing process. The reason why he left his country was not to oppose it. After he left his country, he actually made very careful statements about it. Instead of adopting an attitude directly targeting his country, he drew a line where he tried to help his country with highly objective assessments. That is why he mistakenly found the courage to walk into the consulate. If he had felt a more serious enmity, he would not have gone. He kept telling me that they were not an enemy to him.
I mean, this was goodwill. But, apparently, they targeted Jamal internally. It seems that way.
You went through a very traumatic experience, and you went through it with millions of people following along. In what ways did that make things harder, and in what ways was the support of people following helpful?
There is no single answer to this question, but I will try to address it. The loss of Jamal was very traumatic, and it shook the entire world, with respect to human rights and to the nature of his profession. It has a political aspect, too, since he was killed in a consulate. His murder relates to so many things, including the intersection of his private life and his work. I was the only contact for his relatives, his loved ones, his friends, his family, and that made me postpone my own agony and sorrow. It was only later on, when I was alone, that I came to understand what I lost, and how and why, and what sort of situation I was in. When I say I understood, of course I understood from the start, but the pain came much later. Being busy with the legal investigation and trying to understand what was going on—all these things postponed my pain and depression. When it came later, it was as a much bigger wave.
