The Saudi plunge into quicksand over the death of Jamal Khashoggi is growing more surreal by the day.

The only credible inquiry would have to come from the United Nations but it is treating the killing as a bilateral matter between Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

It cannot act without a demand backed by sharp pressure from governments in the 15-member Security Council or the 193 countries at the UN General Assembly.

President Donald Trump, the closest friend the Saudi royals have in the West, rightly called the killing and cover-up a “total fiasco”. Then, gently tapped Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MbS’s) knuckles by revoking the US visas of 21 Saudis, including those identified by Turkey as the alleged killing squad sent to Istanbul.

So, the White House is unlikely to be the instigator for a UN inquiry. The 47-member Human Rights Council could decide on its own enquiry on grounds of freedom of expression since Khashoggi was a journalist. But that is not likely soon since the US has handed back its membership and Arab members will not dare to act against Saudi Arabia.

G-7 ministers including the US today condemned “in the strongest possible terms the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi” but did not call for an independent inquiry. They left it to Saudi Arabia and Turkey, thus stating no opinion on how high the conspiracy rose in the Saudi regime. Their statement though strongly worded was proforma diplomatic jargon.

Turkey’s Recep Erdogan had promised to reveal all today but did little more than ask for an impartial inquiry and repeat a few details already leaked earlier. He tried to dramatize his speech by calling it a premeditated and “savage” murder but released no audio or video recording or other evidence of his claims. He also did not call outright for a UN inquiry.

Erdogan seems to be gloating over the squirming Saudi regime and opening bargaining positions for putting a squeeze on it. Hidden in his rhetoric was a hint at bargains, which could come up is discussions during CIA Director Gina Haspel’s current visit to Turkey.

He praised the “sincerity” of MbS’s father as Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Islam, absolving him from blame. But he was silent on the role of MbS, who consolidated his near-absolute power in Saudi Arabia in 2017 by staging a “coup d’état” within the royal family that has ruled the country since 1932 when Abdul-Aziz bin Saud created it after his own name.

Erdogan was hinting that the two countries might find satisfactory accommodation if the father were to cut down the son’s growing power and, without saying so clearly, offer Turkey financial help for its currently strapped economy.

In the elaborately abstruse language of Middle Eastern back-stabbing, the reference only to the Two Holy Mosques was a hint that the Saudi King does not have a larger role in the Muslim world. He is Custodian because the Mosques are located on Saudi territory but leadership of Islam is a separate matter.

Erdogan is known to dream about Turkey’s rise in world affairs to reflect the bygone glory of the Ottoman Empire, when the Ottomans ruled almost all Saudi territory and Turkey was the seat of the Caliphate of global Islam. The Turk was poking at the Saudi with a reminder of which country has the more glorious past in Islam.

Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the 82-year-old current king, was chosen by agreement within the Saudi royal family in 2015 and was seconded by a coterie of powerful princes inherited from his predecessor. MbS ousted the coterie in 2017.

The US and many others welcomed MbS as a long overdue reformer expected to free Saudi society, including women, from under the thumb of the country’s religious establishment that extolls the country’s native but intolerant Salafi and Wahhabi Islam.

Erdogan, who favors the doctrines of the Islamic Brotherhood developed in Egypt starting in the 1920s, sees the 32-year-old Crown Prince as a hothead favored by a doting aged father and would like to seem him ousted not least because he is a fervent Salafist.

Both the Salafists and Islamic Brotherhood are hardline evangelists that favor the spread of their variants of the Islamic religion across the world and would like to see all other religions subjugated or eliminated.

For outsiders, there is not much to like in either set of doctrines although Islam-inspired beliefs could on their own find favor with many if left to make their way peacefully.

Now, this rivalry as embodied by Erdogan and MbS is the underlying fuel in current tensions between Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The Saudi religious establishment hates Turkey’s versions of Islam no less than the Shia versions practiced in Iran.

Erdogan was hinting that weakening MbS a little could save the Salafist Saudi king from facing two simultaneous long struggles of attrition, one with Turkish Islam and the other with Iranian Islam.