Turkish crime scene investigators look for clues into the killing of Jamal Khashoggi at an underground car park in Istanbul on Tuesday. Investigators searched a Saudi consulate vehicle that contained two suitcases and other items, according to CNN Turk. Source: TRT via AP

Saudi Arabia has said that 18 officials were under investigation in the killing, but Erdogan said that he would call King Salman of Saudi Arabia and ask that the case be adjudicated in Istanbul, not Riyadh or elsewhere in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi government maintained at first that Khashoggi had left the Saudi consulate in Istanbul alive and well before reversing course. Since admitting on Friday that Khashoggi had been killed inside the consulate, Saudi Arabia has claimed that his death was accidental and that the operation was not authorised by the crown prince.

Turkish and western intelligence officials and politicians have rejected that account as not credible, and Erdogan made clear in his speech on Tuesday that he held the same view. Without naming names, he said those responsible, no matter how high-ranking, must be held to account.

Erdogan largely confined himself to confirming and adding some details to what his government had already leaked to the news media, rather than dropping new bombshells.

And he did not mention Turkish officials’ claims that his government has audio and video recordings of the killing.

Khashoggi, 59, was a Saudi who had been close to members of the royal family and to Erdogan, became a critic of the kingdom as the powerful Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, cracked down on dissent.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey laid out on Tuesday the Saudi planning of what he called the “premeditated murder” of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the country’s consulate in Istanbul, and demanded that the Saudi suspects face justice in Turkey.

After saying he would reveal “the naked truth” about Khashoggi’s death, Erdogan, in his first extended remarks on the case, sketched out the chronology of a broad operation and offered some new details.

The team of Saudi officials that arrived in stages in Istanbul to carry out the killing included generals, he said, and the Saudis conducted reconnaissance in rural areas outside the city where investigators have been searching for Khashoggi’s remains.

“It is clear that this savage murder did not happen at the drop of a dime but was a planned affair,” Erdogan said, challenging the official Saudi account that the journalist was accidentally killed in a melee inside the consulate.

The speech made clear that Erdogan had no intention of dropping a case that has created an international furore, and that he would press the Saudis for an honest accounting of a killing that he pointedly noted occurred inside his country. He posed a series of tough questions, throwing down a challenge to the Saudi leadership.

“Why was the 15-man Saudi team in Istanbul on the day of the murder?” he asked. “On whose orders? We are seeking answers. Why was the consulate not opened to investigators immediately? When the murder was so clear, why were there so many different statements given by Saudis? Why has the body of someone, the killing of whom has been officially admitted, not been found? Who is the local collaborator who disposed of Khashoggi’s body? Saudi must answer all these questions.”

Erdogan’s much-anticipated address, to the weekly gathering of his party in the parliament chamber in Ankara, came after more than two weeks of carefully orchestrated leaks to the news media by Turkey that implicated the highest levels of the Saudi government, notably the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in the death of Khashoggi on October 2.