Iran Press/Middle East: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he is hopeful about the fate of missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi amid reports that the critic may have been killed shortly after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Erdogan told reporters on Sunday that authorities were looking into all video surveillance footage of the mission's entrances and monitoring all inbound and outbound flights since the writer disappeared on Tuesday, Aljazeera reported.
"I am following the [issue] and we will inform the world whatever the outcome [of the official probe]", Erdogan said.
"God willing, we will not be faced with a situation we do not want. I am still hopeful," adding that "it is very, very upsetting for us that it happened in our country".
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Turkish sources told the Reuters news agency on Saturday they believed Khashoggi was killed at the consulate in what they described as a "premeditated murder".
Khashoggi entered on Tuesday to get documents for his forthcoming marriage. His fiancee, who had waited outside, said he never came out.
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Since then, Turkish and Saudi officials have offered conflicting accounts of his disappearance, with Ankara saying there was no evidence that he had left the diplomatic mission and Riyadh saying he exited the premises the same day.
Earlier on Saturday Turkish officials said prosecutors had begun investigating Khashoggi’s disappearance and a spokesman for President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party said authorities would uncover his whereabouts.
Saudi Arabia’s consul in Istanbul opened up his mission on Saturday in an effort to show that Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, who vanished five days ago, was not on the premises and said that talk of his kidnapping was baseless.
“I would like to confirm that...Jamal is not at the consulate nor in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the consulate and the embassy are actively searching for him,” consul-general Mohammad al-Otaibi told Reuters news agency in an interview at the consulate.
Opening cupboards, filing cabinets and wooden panels covering air conditioning units, Otaibi walked through the six floors of the building including a basement prayer room, offices, visa counters, kitchens and toilets as well as storage and security rooms.
Mohammad al-Otaibi said the consulate was equipped with cameras but they did not record footage, so no images could be retrieved of Khashoggi entering or leaving the consulate, which is ringed by police barriers and has high security fences topped with barbed wire.
The building has two entrances at the front and back, and Otaibi said Khashoggi could have left from either side.
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