Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday said that recordings related to the death of Saudi journalist Khashoggi have been shared with the United States, France, UK, Saudi Arabia, and Germany.
"We gave the tapes. We gave them to Saudi Arabia, United States, Germans, French and British, all of them. They have listened to all the conversations," Erdogan said before departing for France to take part in the centenary celebrations of the Armistice of World War I on Saturday, Aljazeera reported.
Erdogan also stated that Saudi Arabia knows that Khashoggi's killer is amongst the 15 Saudi nationals who landed in Istanbul before the October 2 incident, according to Al Jazeera.
The existence of a recording had not been previously confirmed by Turkish authorities, even though Turkish sources had alleged that the authorities are in possession of an audio recording that documented Khashoggi's killing at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Furthermore, the Turkish police ended their search for Khashoggi's body, with a Turkish advisor to Erdogan indicating the possibility of his body being dissolved in acid for disposal.
Turkish law enforcement, however, will continue their probe into the senior Saudi scribe's death.
Khashoggi had gone missing on October 2 after stepping into Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul to collect documents that would allow him to get married to his fiancee Hatice Cengiz. Cengiz, who was waiting outside the consulate, raised an alarm after Khashoggi failed to re-emerge from the consulate, leading to a chain of revelations by both Turkey and Saudi Arabia regarding this case.
Saudi authorities have confirmed that Khashoggi had died inside its consular premises in Istanbul, leading to the arrest of 18 Saudi officials in connection with the crime.
Erdogan has repeatedly called for transparent investigations into the scribe's death, going as far as demanding that the arrested Saudi nationals be tried in Turkey.
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