It has now been a year since Jamal Khashoggi stepped into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to retrieve a document he needed to marry his fiancee.

Until then, Saudi Arabia's international reputation was on the rise. The newspaper headlines were about women being allowed to drive and cinemas opened to the public.

Young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was described as a healthy fan who wants to modernize the closed and ultra-conservative kingdom.

Rumor has it

But Jamal Khashoggi's death put an abrupt end to the charm offensive. Since the brutal murder was discovered, Mohammed Bin Salman's international reputation has been at the bottom.

On the anniversary of the assassination, fiancee, close friends and intellectual property activists want to honor Khashoggi's memory. But it is also clear that one wants to keep alive the accusations that it was Mohammed bin Salman who ordered the brutal murder of his critics.

The supposed purpose of the murder was to silence a troublesome critic, perhaps sending a signal to other critical voices in the Saudi diaspora.

Obvious miscalculation

But one year after the murder, it is clear that the plan failed completely. The Saudi death patrol sent to the consulate in Istanbul succeeded without strangling Jamal Khashoggi to death, but instead of silencing a critical voice, the entire critical world of the world turned to the kingdom.

An obvious miscalculation in the plan to silence critical voices was Turkey's actions. The Turkish intelligence service had planted microphones at the Saudi consulate, which revealed the murder.

Saudi Arabia's initial strategy, to claim that Khashoggi left the consulate and then disappeared, went in the lead.

Turkish President Erdogan has since skilfully brought the matter to life and undermined Mohammed bin Salman's attempt to sweep the matter under the rug. It has caused a diplomatic "cold war" between Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Trying to win support in the West

President Erdogan's international reputation is also not directly at the top, but in the matter of the murder of Khashoggi, he has succeeded in resuming the ambition of being the right-wing leader of the Sunni Muslim world.

Ahead of the anniversary, Mohammed bin Salman has made an attempt to forego criticism in an interview with US CBS, where he once again denies involvement in the assassination and tries to draw attention to the escalating regional conflict with Iran, to win support from the West.

But the questions about Jamal Khashoggi's murder are haunting him. The remains of Jamal Khashoggi's body have not been found. Although we will never see an independent judicial trial, the murder will torment the Saudi Crown Prince to the extent that it is doubtful if he will ever recover.