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Pope Visits Turkey
Street protests, tensions high before Benedict XVI's first trip to Muslim country
In the first Papal visit to the country side 1979, Benedict XVI lands in Turkey tomorrow amid multiple controversies over relation between the mainly Muslim country and the west.
First, many religious Turks are still inflamed by Benedict's words at lecture at the University of Regensburg in Germany in September, where the Pope drew attention to what he described as Islam's anti-rational nature. He spoke of religions spreading faith by the sword, and quoted a 14th century writer who described Islam as "evil and violent."
The Pope apologised for offending Muslims a few days later, but for many of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims the damage had been done: In a year when Danish newspapers published images of Mohammed many Muslims believed were blasphemous, the head of Christendom's largest church appearing to condemn Islam's nature was confirmation that many in the west are "Islamophobic."
The weekend saw 20,000 Turks filling an Istanbul square denouncing the Papal visit as an "affront to Islam."
Benedict, in his previous incarnation as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - one of Jean Paul II's closest, and most conservative advisers - has previous when it comes to Turkey. He's known to support the idea of Europe as a Christian continent, and in 2004 he described Turkey's candidacy to join the EU as "grave error against the tide of history."
This view dismayed Turks, both secular and religious, as well as EU officials, who are at pains to stress that the European Union is a political and economic, not a religious club.
The Vatican points out that while he will meet Turkey's president and deputy PM, Benedict's visit is religious. He plans to a shrine to the Virgin Mary in Izmir, before meeting the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the Orthodox Christian church, in Istanbul. Many Turks believe Bartholomew to be scheming to re-establish Christian influence in Turkey, while the government does not recognise his status as the ruler of the world's 300 million Greek Orthodox Christians.
Orthodox Christians split from the Roman church 1,000 years ago. Benedict sees reconciliation between the various strands of Christianity as one of the key aims of his rule. Last week he helds talk with Dr Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican church.
Some commentators claim that drawing attention to Turkey's treatment of its 100,000 Christians - for some time a point of argument between the EU and Ankara - is the real purpose of Benedict's visit.
