Tuesday’s gonna be a great day for America! ….right? Please? I know the polls and the stats all bring good tidings. I know people are fed up with the constant stream of hate emanating from Washington, D.C. And all that energy is going to lead to some real change!

For the love of god, you’re all going out and voting on Tuesday, right?!!?!?!

Way to go, Saturday Night Live. This sketch nails it. I’m laughing (and also crying and oh god please just don’t forget to vote do whatever you have to and make it happen).

Colombo, Sri Lanka – Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena has ordered parliament to reconvene in 10 days, according to an official gazette notification, amid mounting pressure to let legislators resolve a protracted crisis over two rival prime ministers.

The announcement on Sunday came despite opposition calls for an immediate lifting of the legislature’s suspension.

Sirisena had suspended parliamentary proceedings after abruptly firing Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on October 26 and replacing him with Mahinda Rajapaksa, a controversial former president.

In recent days, a steady stream of defections has eroded Wickremesinghe’s narrow majority in the 225-member House.

More soon…

PSA: Ariana Grande is not feeling salty about her breakup with Pete Davidson. In fact, she’s feeling grateful.

Ariana released a new song, “thank u, next,” on Saturday night, 35 minutes before Saturday Night Live aired. Despite this seemingly shady timing (Davidson is on the show), the track — which mentions her exes Big Sean, Ricky Alvarez, the late Mac Miller, and Davidson by name — is generous and kind.

“Even almost got married / And for Pete I’m so thankful,” she sings. “Wish I could say thank you to Malcolm / ‘Cause he was an angel.” (Malcolm is Mac Miller’s legal first name.)

Earlier this week, Ariana tweeted and deleted some more pointed thoughts on Davidson after he joked about their relationship during an SNL promo clip with Maggie Rogers. “for someone who claims to hate relevancy you sure love clinging to it huh,” she wrote. “thank u, next.”

During the Weekend Update segment of Saturday night’s episode (about an hour and a half after “thank u, next” was released), Davidson addressed the breakup himself. “I know some of you are curious about the breakup, but the truth is it’s nobody’s business, and sometimes things just don’t work out and that’s OK,” he said.

Kraynovka, Russia – After more than 20 years of dispute, five countries – Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan – have signed an agreement that will resolve the legal status of the Caspian Sea, and devised a formula to divide its resources.

Besides vast oil and gas reserves, the Caspian Sea is enormously rich in fish, with sturgeon being the most valuable.

The average price for caviar – fish roe, specifically from sturgeon – can run up to 25,000 roubles ($380) a kilo on the black market in Russia. 

But fishermen are expected to be the last to benefit with strict measures and fines in place, not only for selling the banned product – it is illegal in Russia to privately harvest or sell black caviar, which comes from the endangered sturgeon fish – but also due to the new sweeping and convoluted laws controlling the sea. 

Kraynovka is a small village on the shore of the Caspian Sea, an hour’s drive along a bumpy road from the nearest city of Kizlyar in northern Dagestan. There are 2,648 people living there currently.

People are barely surviving here. If there were any other jobs, no one would go to sea.

Ruslan Amirov, fisherman

In its booming years, the Soviet ’60s, the village hosted a large fish factory employing most locals and villagers from the surrounding areas. 

Ruslan Amirov’s parents moved to Kraynovka when he was five or six years old.

He had already started fishing by the time he was 11. 

“We didn’t use any boats back in the day, you could put a net near the shore, where the water reaches your knees, and catch something,” he reminisces.

There were plenty of fish “back in the day”. Now, the numbers are dwindling, according to statistics from the Federal Agency for Fishery.

This, combined with the ban on fishing sturgeon and strict restrictions by border control, place a heavy burden on fishermen’s shoulders.

Amirov lives in a small apartment that his mother received from the government while working at the factory. Now, half of that two-storey building is abandoned.

The empty window frames used to frighten the village children as they passed by, but they’ve grown used to it. Several houses in the village are this dilapidated. There is no central heating and power outages are frequent.

Amirov has to provide for his small son and pregnant wife by fishing in the Caspian. He worked for two years in Sochi before the 2014 Olympics, making 50,000 to 60,000 roubles ($750 to 900) a month, but decided to return to where he grew up.  

“People are barely surviving here. If there were any other jobs, no one would go to sea,” says Amirov. 

“Now, fishermen have to travel between 200 and 400km [to catch fish]. They are being caught [by border authorities], killed and drowned but they have to feed their families somehow; they have to pay off their debts. There’s no other solution,” says Amirov.

“What’s the point of them looking for other jobs? It’s easier to go to sea once and take the risk, then, they’ll be able to pay off their debts.” 

In December 1992, at a meeting of fishery representatives from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Russia, a protocol was signed establishing the Interdepartmental Commission on Aquatic Bioresources of the Caspian Sea. This commission has become the only body for joint management of the Caspian’s plentiful wealth.

The official ban on fishing sturgeon in the Caspian was implemented in 2009 and has been renewed every year since.

Stanislav Pritchin, an analyst at Chatham House and one of the most prominent experts on the Caspian Sea’s legal negotiations, says that “there’s no other way but imposing a ban” as sturgeon is “becoming extinct”.

“The fishing industry is quite a painful topic because poaching is very common in the Caspian Sea. It is a very profitable industry, and sturgeon is a very valuable breed of fish, especially for black caviar. 

“There is an official ban on sturgeon fishing in the Caspian Sea, but in practice, it is very difficult to put such restrictions on fishermen, because for them it is a source of income, a source of profit, sometimes the only one, says Pritchin.

“Therefore, there are strict controls on the fishermen. I believe that this is a justified measure, given that the situation in the Caspian Sea and the environment, in general, is not the best.”

The area around the village and port has turned into a border control zone, so anyone crossing this virtual border without permission – a document can be obtained in Kaspiysk, 18km from the capital, Makhachkala – would be fined.

Fishing hours are strictly regulated: fishermen have to be back at the port before sunset, around 7.30pm, which affects their customary fishing techniques. One example is the mugil, a fish which they can no longer catch as it must be netted at night.

According to the Russian Foreign Ministry and Federal Agency for Fishery, the ban needs to be maintained until at least 2027 in order to replenish the sturgeon population.

“Dagestan’s fish industry has been and still is one of the leading sectors of the republic’s economy. Dagestan has significant potential to develop its fishing industry with all its components – from fish and aquaculture production to the processing of aquatic organisms and product sales,” says Russian agriculture deputy minister and head of the federal fishery agency, Ilya Shestakov.

According to the agency, since the start of 2018, there have been 3,009 cases of administrative offences and 47 criminal cases registered in the Caspian. 

Border authorities have seized 1,358kg of sturgeon during this same period.

“An important component of the fight against this evil is, of course, the fight against the trafficking of illegally obtained aquatic biological resources.

“We are taking a number of steps to ensure full traceability of the origin of aquatic biological resources in our markets, and we believe that they will be applied together with the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia in the very near future,” Shestakov told Al Jazeera. 

For women, there’s even less work in Kraynovka and few want anything to do with fish.

Zapir Amaradziev raises a 13-year-old son by himself, as his wife left nine years ago. He says that “she got tired of this sort of life.”

“It’s like gambling here. If you go to sea and bring back some fish – you are lucky, otherwise, you drown in debt,” he adds. 

Amaradziev has accrued large debt through buying nets and petrol for the last fishing season.

In August, he only managed to go to sea five times due to unfavourable conditions. The Caspian is famous for strong winds that fishermen cannot weather in their light, self-made boats, or “baydas”, equipped with fast engines and little else. 

When asked whether his son will follow in his footsteps, Amaradziev says that he desperately doesn’t want him to become a fisherman. 

His son, sitting nearby, exclaims, “Yeah, no way in hell!”

Amaradziev continues: “It’s getting worse and worse here. I would love to sell all this fishing equipment, including the boat, but I wouldn’t know what else to do.”

Our current president takes the back seat in a golf cart instead of walking. He downs monster Big Macs in lieu of salads and guzzles Diet Cokes like they’re water.

But in better(ish!) times, even our most toxically masculine leaders seemed to care about exercise, and did so while rocking teeny-tiny runner’s booty shorts.

I can’t say I ever longed to see any of my presidents in anything but profoundly boring suits. That being said, I find it soothing to see our leaders go outside to do something in nature that doesn’t involve a golf course or a mediocre Florida resort.

Whatever you think of our pre-Donald Trump presidents, at least they were marginally in touch with reality. Unlike Trump, they understood that the body doesn’t have a “finite amount of energy.”

Presidential jogging actually started with President Carter, who was in power when the form of cardio started gaining popularity in the 1970s.

“Carter is the classic jogger of the 1970s, albeit somewhat older,” Paul Milvy, an assistant professor of community medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, told the Washington Post in 1979.

Not only did Carter stan jogging, he did it while rocking incredible short-shorts. Look at Carter werk that aesthetic while president. He was in the late 50s when he decided to show this much thigh:

Image: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Image: Corbis via Getty Images

Whatever you think about his policies, Carter was a short-short jogging icon. Unfortunately, President Ronald Reagan didn’t jog while in office, so it was eight years before his successor President George H.W. Bush could pick up where Carter left off.

Bush was in his mid-sixties when he became president and started jogging regularly in front of the camera.

There were far longer, more fashionable shorts in style at the time. Bush nonetheless chose…this look:

Image: rick maiman/Rick Maiman

Image: cynthia johnson/Getty Images

Image: cynthia johnson/Getty Images

The single-term president showed a lot of of skin for sure. Frankly, however, my favorite photo of the era is this image of Barbara Bush “jogging,” according to the original photo caption. 

The woman is in full-length chino pants and a white polo. She’s not breaking a sweat, she’s not even trotting. She’s got a fresh perm. This, my friends, is how you jog. 

Image: mark reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images

Then we had President Bill Clinton, who took the jogging short-short and made it even tinier. The man basically wore bikini underwear in public.

Then Vice President Al Gore tried to sex it down with a map-print T-shirt, but even he couldn’t resist the appeal of the short-short.

Image: tim clary/AFP/Getty Images

Image: Robert Giroux/AFP/Getty Images

Image: Cynthia johnson/Getty Images

Clinton even occasionally struggled with a classic ’90s athleisure problem: wearing tiny shorts with an oversized shirt (or in his case, sweatshirt,) making it appear as if he’s wearing a mini dress.

Image: luke frazza/AFP/Getty Images

Tragically for some I guess, Clinton and the short-shorts era came to an end with the election of President George W. Bush. Over time, Bush extended the length of the presidential jogging short to a more traditional, mid-thigh length. 

The era of the radical short-shorts was dead.

Image: paul buck/AFP/Getty Images

Image: Paul AFP/Getty Images

You might imagine that President Barack Obama was a big jogger. Unfortunately, Obama typically exercised in private (except for that time he and then Vice President Joe Biden jogged in their office attire, which has its own kind of appeal.) 

And President Trump does this.

Image: ludovic marin/AFP/Getty Images

Sigh. Let’s not get too nostalgic. I’m not particularly interested in seeing any of these men in short-shorts in the future.

We all, however, should aspire to see something better, like a president who moves, or who at the very least demonstrates knowledge of the U.S. Constitution.

The French archipelago of New Caledonia in the South Pacific appears set to remain part of France, according to partial results of an independence referendum.

Local TV network NC La 1ere reported that nearly 57 percent of voters had rejected secession in Sunday’s poll, with nearly two thirds of the ballots counted. Turnout stood at almost 80 percent, it said.

French President Emmanuel Macron, addressing reporters gathered at the Elysee Palace in the French capital, Paris, said the “majority” of New Caledonians had declared they wanted the territory to “remain French”.

“Voters were allowed to make a sovereign choice, with full knowledge of the facts and the relationship between New Caledonia and France,” Macron said on Sunday.

“I am proud we have finally passed this historic step together,” he added.

The final result is set to be declared later on Sunday evening.

More than 174,000 voters registered to take part in the ballot.

The referendum, the result of a 30-year long decolonisation process, is the first vote on self-determination to be held in a French territory since Djibouti in the Horn of Africa opted for independence during a poll in 1977.

SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies

Egyptian security forces have killed 19 people linked to a deadly attack on Coptic Christians, according to the interior ministry.

The suspects were killed in a gunfight in the desert of Minya province in central Egypt after security forces pursued them, the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

“The terrorist elements opened fire on the [security] forces who responded,” the statement said.

Those killed were part of the group that killed seven Coptic Christian pilgrims in the same province on Friday, the ministry said.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group, claimed responsibility for the attack, although it provided no evidence of its involvement.

Friday’s attack was the latest in a string of assaults against the minority Coptic community.

Armed men opened fire on buses carrying pilgrims to the Monastery of St Samuel in Minya province, killing seven people and leaving 18 wounded.

On Saturday, hundreds gathered at the Prince Tadros church in Minya, a city some 260km south of the capital, Cairo, to bury six members of the same family who were shot dead in the attack. Among them were a 15-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl.

The seventh victim, an Anglican bus driver, was buried on Friday evening in a village outside Minya.

On Sunday, Pope Francis said he was pained over the attack on the pilgrims.

“I express my pain after the terrorist attack which two days ago hit the Coptic Orthodox church in Egypt,” Francis said in Saint Peter’s.

“I pray for the victims, pilgrims killed just because they were Christian,” he added.

The Copts are an Orthodox denomination who make up an estimated 10 to 15 percent of Egypt’s more than 90 million people, although there is no formal religious census to determine an exact number.

They are the Middle East’s largest Christian community and have long complained of persecution and insufficient protection.

In December 2017, a gunman killed 11 people at a church and a Christian-owned shop near Cairo.

More than 100 Copts have been killed in such attacks since 2011, according to The Associated Press news agency.

SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies

Thousands of Iranians have rallied in Tehran to mark the 39th anniversary of the US embassy takeover, as Washington prepares to reimpose all sanctions lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.

The crowd chanted “Down with US” and “Death to Israel” during the rally in the Iranian capital on Sunday, and state TV said similar demonstrations were held in other cities and towns.

Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Tehran, said the crowd is “bigger” and “angrier” during this year’s commemoration.

“It has to do with the fact that the anniversary coincides with the deadline by the United States to reimpose sanctions that were lifted by the 2015 nuclear deal,” he said.

“But many Iranians that we spoke to said that this deadline is meaningless and that foreign investment has already been scared off…and that any economic damage has already been done.”    

Shortly after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iranian students stormed the American embassy, taking 52 hostages for 444 days. The US cut off diplomatic relations in response to the hostage-taking.

In Iran, November 4 is also known as Student Day and the National Day of the Fight against Global Arrogance.

Iran’s government celebrates the embassy takeover every year as a decisive blow against the United States, which had supported the autocratic rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

‘Den of spies’

The embassy compound, widely known as the “den of spies,” is now a cultural centre.

Anger and distrust of the US are surging again following President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers despite Tehran’s compliance with the agreement, which was negotiated under the Obama administration.

In May, the Trump administration announced the restoration of sanctions against Iran. The first round took effect in August, while the second round targeting Iran’s oil and gas, as well as its shipping and banking industries, will take effect on Monday, November 5.

Iran is already in the grip of an economic crisis and has seen sporadic protests in recent months, as Iranian officials tried to downplay the sanctions and their effects.

The US said the sanctions are not aimed at toppling the government, but at persuading it to radically change its policies, including its support for regional armed groups and its development of long-range ballistic missiles.

Iranian leaders said the sanctions are aimed at toppling the government and have ruled out negotiations with the Trump administration.

At a gathering on Saturday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, portrayed the sanctions as part of a long tradition of American hostility towards the Islamic Republic, which he said had nevertheless prevailed.

SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies

Whenever I’m in predominantly white spaces with my Salvadoran grandparents, I’m on high alert because at any second, some racist bigot can harass them for speaking Spanish. I haven’t had to defend them yet, but given the recent rise in hate crimes and related incidents, it’s likely I will one day. 

We’ve seen it happen at restaurants, retail stores, and schools, but a recent incident took place at a grocery store in Colorado, was captured on camera, and went viral. Unlike the other times, a white woman stepped up. Her name is Kamira Trent, and because she called the police, Linda Dwire was arrested and charged for bias-motivated harassment. I’m always ready to protect my grandparents, but if a white woman like Trent is fighting by my side, it will make a great difference.  

We are two years into the resistance against Trump’s white supremacist agenda, and yet, not nearly enough white women stand up for women of color the way Trent did in everyday life and at the polls. Fifty-two percent of white women elected Trump in the first place, and 63 percent of white women voted for Roy Moore, an accused child molester from Alabama who said America was “great” during slavery. 

“White women are constantly choosing their whiteness over their womanhood, and they’re choosing to vote for people who will help maintain their white supremacy as opposed to what will help maintain the safety of women overall,” activist, writer, and lecturer Rachel Cargle told Mashable. 

“White women are constantly choosing their whiteness over their womanhood.”

The midterm elections are just a few days away, and white women need to vote for candidates who are not racist, which you can determine by researching voting records. They also need to elect progressive women of color, which is now more possible than ever because the number of women of color candidates for Congress has increased 75 percent since 2012. Also, follow the lead of black female voters, who as Cargle points out, have continuously made better choices by voting for progressive candidates that will help, not harm, marginalized communities.

While elections fuel partisanship, it’s important to note that the issue of racism goes beyond party lines. Conservative and liberal white women continue to perpetrate racism and anti-blackness. 

Catrice Jackson, a racial justice educator, speaker, and author, says that when working with white women in her courses and workshops, they often other themselves and make themselves out to be the exceptional white woman, which in turn means they have not addressed their own racism. 

It’s for this reason Jackson echoes Martin Luther King Jr.’s sentiment and says the “most dangerous and threatening” white people in the U.S. are white liberals. Take a moment to consider the white liberal woman who attends the Women’s March but won’t go to a Black Lives Matter rally, or the progressive white mom who puts her kid in a private school to access better resources, contributing to school segregation. 

“They don’t see themselves as being part of the problem, and so, one of the first things that white women allies need to do is to accept and own their own racism and begin to do their own, personal inner work to continuously uproot those racist behaviors and those implicit biases,” Jackson said. 

So while participating in the midterm elections — or any election — is a great step, it’s just the start to the life-long work required of white women to effectively support women of color in their fight to end racism and create equitable systems in the U.S. Jackson emphasizes that being an ally is not a noun or something you become. 

“You don’t take three workshops, read seven books, and now you’re an ally,” she said. “It is a constant, deliberate, intentional way of being, every single day and every single moment, until you take your last breath.” 

Although it’s expected of white women to acknowledge their privilege, many feel defensive about the term. Jackson views that type of response as a signal that they are not doing their work. 

“It is a clear, red flag that they do not understand that white supremacy and racism is not just a personal way of being in the world, but it is a systemic set of rules, beliefs, thoughts, behaviors, policies, and laws that are set in place to silence black and brown folks, to keep them marginalized, and to keep them further oppressed,” Jackson said. 

Jackson recognizes that white women did not choose their whiteness, but instead of being paralyzed by fear, shame, or guilt, and causing more harm, she expects them to take daily actions to continue to dismantle racism and support women of color. Those actions could include sharing the work of women of color, buying from black and brown business owners, and connecting women of color to networks and resources. 

“Just like they didn’t choose to be white, we didn’t choose to be black or brown. But every day, black and brown women have to get up and fight the system and deal with racism, whether we want to deal with it or not,” Jackson said. 

“Just like they didn’t choose to be white, we didn’t choose to be black or brown.”

Jackson says that as long as racism exists, white women who want to behave as allies cannot opt out or take a break from fighting racism. She also explains that on a daily basis, black and brown women experience racial battle fatigue, and so it’s important that white women find ways to help nourish black and brown women. Cargle started a fundraiser to help give black women and girls access to therapy sessions and support their mental health, which people can donate to here. 

When searching for education and ideas about how to be a part of the solution, Jackson says white women should turn to online articles, videos, and other resources. For a more in-depth education, she says white women must turn to women of color who are racial justice educators and buy their books, sign-up for their courses and workshops, and pay women of color for their labor. When learning and engaging with women of color, they need to listen more than they speak. However, white women so often fail to do that, and instead try to lead conversations about race.

“One of the biggest and most important actions of an ally is to follow the lead of black and brown people, and what we see happening is a lot of ‘so-called’ allies, possibly performative allies, taking up space, taking the platform, hosting the workshops, and leading the discussions,” Jackson said.  

Cargle notes that it’s not enough for white women to want to learn about racism. They need to help end it. The 2017 Women’s March was deemed a setback for the intersectional feminist movement and an example of performative activism by many women of color because it did not address the issues facing women of color. The Women’s March organizers have addressed this criticism, but some women of color have yet to see changes at the leadership level trickle down to the movement itself.

Cargle attended the rally in Washington, D.C., and carried a poster that said, “If you don’t fight for all women, you fight for no women.” There, she says she witnessed a parade for white women, not a protest. 

Although white women like Kamira Trent have stood up for women of color, they should not be hailed as heroes, according to Cargle. “You’re not a hero for being a basic human,” she said. 

If a white woman comes to my aid personally, in the event that my grandparents are harassed for speaking Spanish, I also wouldn’t want her to play the hero. I would want her to intervene because she can and should, because it’s the right thing to do. 

“I think that we need to stop celebrating the base level of humanity, and instead have that as an expectation of the baseline and not some heroic act,” Cargle continued. “We need to start implementing that type of action of protecting the most marginalized as a normalized way of existing in the world.”

The Turkish pro-government newspaper Sabah has reported that journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s corpse was dismembered and put into five suitcases after he was strangled upon entering Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul.

Citing unnamed officials, Sabah reported on Sunday that the suitcases were then taken to the Saudi consul’s residence near the consulate the day the writer was killed on October 2.

The officials said that Maher Mutreb, Salah Tubeigy and Thaar al-Harbi were the three key figures from the 15-member hit squad who were involved in dismembering Khashoggi’s body and removing it from the premises.

Mutreb was a direct aide to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, while Tubeigy was the head of the Saudi Scientific Council of Forensics and a colonel in the Saudi army.

Al-Harbi was reportedly promoted to lieutenant in the Saudi royal guard last year for bravery in the defence of the crown prince’s palace in Jeddah.

The leak of the details coincides with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement in which he said he believed that the order to kill the journalist came from the “highest levels” of the Saudi state.

In an opinion piece published by the US newspaper The Washington Post on Friday, Erdogan called on Saudi Arabia to answer outstanding questions concerning the 59-year-old’s killing last month.

“We must reveal the identities of the puppet masters behind Khashoggi’s killing,” Erdogan said.

The body of Khashoggi, a former Washington Post columnist and critic of MBS, remains missing.

On Wednesday, a Turkish prosecutor said Khashoggi was strangled and dismembered soon after entering the building, in the first official comments from the Turks on the fate of the writer.

Turkish media outlets have named the 15 Saudi suspects who flew into Istanbul and left on the same day the journalist was last seen.

The joint Turkish and Saudi probe into Khashoggi’s fate has made little progress so far.

‘Dismembered and dissolved’

On Friday, an adviser to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the team that killed Khashoggi cut up his body in order to dissolve for easier disposal.

Yasin Aktay, who was a friend of Khashoggi’s, told Hurriyet newspaper that the corpse was disposed of by dismembering and dissolving it.

“According to the latest information we have, the reason they dismembered his body is to dissolve it easier,” said Aktay.

“They aimed to ensure no sign of the body was left.”

A senior Turkish official has told Al Jazeera the journalist’s body was dismembered and dissolved in acid, without offering evidence.

At loggerheads

Saudi Arabia initially denied Khashoggi was killed inside its consulate but, following intense international pressure and after changing their narrative numerous times, the Saudi prosecutor admitted that Khashoggi was killed in a “premeditated” manner.

The Saudi prosecutor flew to Turkey last week and met Istanbul’s chief prosecutor but the investigation has made little progress so far as Saudi Arabia and Turkey remain at loggerheads.

Turkey’s justice minister accused the Saudis of failing to answer questions regarding the case.

Two questions that Turkey wants Riyadh to answer relate to the identity of a “local collaborator” to whom Saudi officials claimed to have handed over Khashoggi’s remains, as well as the identity of the person who ordered the killing.

On Wednesday, a senior Turkish official said that Saudi Arabian officials appeared unwilling to “genuinely cooperate” with Turkey’s investigation.

“The Saudi officials seemed primarily interested in finding out what evidence the Turkish authorities had against the perpetrators,” the official told AFP news agency on the condition of anonymity.

“We did not get the impression that they were keen on genuinely cooperating with the investigation.”

The Saudis have also launched their own investigation, vowing to “uncover every stone” and “punish” those who are responsible.

A spokesperson for President Erdogan’s AK Party said on Wednesday Khashoggi’s killing could not have been made possible without orders from someone in a senior position.

Omar Celik told reporters in Ankara that Turkey would not let anyone cover up Khashoggi’s killing, adding that it was not possible for Saudi officials to still not know the body’s whereabouts.

The Turkish president stressed in the Washington Post op-ed on Friday that Turkey would keep investigating Khashoggi’s case.

“We are shocked and saddened by the efforts of certain Saudi officials to cover up Khashoggi’s premeditated murder, rather than serve the cause of justice, as our friendship would require,” Erdogan said.

Erdogan added that Khashoggi’s murder was a clear violation and a “blatant abuse” of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

“Failure to punish the perpetrators could set a very dangerous precedent,” Erdogan said.