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Yemen is not the only political climate inciting volatility in Saudi Arabia’s oil market. After the brutal kidnapping and dismemberment of highly connected Washington Post writer, Jamal Khashoggi, within the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, it has become obvious that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States are playing a game of political poker and using oil as the cash-out.
President Erdogan of Turkey has been in power for 15 years. In this time period he has managed to gain control of nearly all Turkish news and media; Erdogan is not above promoting his own personal agenda through these means. Just as news broke of Khashoggi’s murder, Turkish officials and the news outlets controlled by them alerted the world that they had possession of audio recordings of Khashoggi’s death. Turkey then attempted to use their possession of these recordings as a direct threat to Saudi Arabia; this kind of pressure was put in place on Saudi Arabia and the United States in order to have the outcome turn to be in Turkey and/or President Erdogan’s favor (Gall).

Unfortunately for Mr. Erdogan, President Donald Trump is not always a predictable player, and oil can often find itself replacing the space reserved for political transparency. Trump decisively backed Mohammed bin Salman and told the world that “rogue killers” were responsible for the murder of Khashoggi despite the CIA later stating that M.B.S was wholly complicit in the most intricate details of the affair (Gall; Harris). This did not please Erdogan; in response, he released in depth descriptions of the tapes in a mounting act of pressure on the two countries. Amanda Sloat of the Brookings Institution says, “Initi