Turkey to host Pope amid anger, tight security

Ankara, Nov 28: Turkey greets Pope Benedict today for a four-day official visit, but the welcome will be distinctly cool due to simmering Muslim anger over his comments on Islam and his past opposition to Ankara's EU ambitions.

Underlining the tensions, Benedict, on his first visit to a Muslim country since becoming Pontiff last year, will travel through the streets of Ankara and Istanbul in a closed car, not in the glass-sided ''popemobile'' usually used on papal trips.

Most Turks seem indifferent to the visit by the Pope, who is spiritual leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics, but security will be very tight with protests expected by a small but vociferous minority of Islamists and hardline nationalists.

''The Pope is head of the Catholic world and maintaining good ties between the Islamic world and the Catholic world is in everybody's interests,'' Ali Bardakoglu, Turkey's top Muslim official, told Reuters in a recent interview.

''Disagreeing with somebody does not mean we are not hospitable to that person,'' said Bardakoglu, who heads Ankara's religious affairs directorate, or Diyanet.

Benedict infuriated Muslims worldwide in September with a lecture that seemed to depict Islam as an irrational religion tainted with violence. He later expressed regret at the pain his comments caused but stopped short of a full apology.

More than 20,000 Muslim protesters rallied against the Pope's trip on Sunday in Istanbul, chanting ''Pope don't come''.

Christian Unity

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, a devout Muslim, will hold brief talks with the Pope at Ankara airport today before leaving for a NATO summit in Riga. He originally said he was too busy to see the Pope, sparking talk of a Turkish snub.

Even before becoming Pope, Benedict upset Turks by speaking out against their bid to join the European Union, citing religious and cultural differences. The Vatican now says it is not opposed to Turkish membership.

After talks in Ankara with President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Bardakoglu, the Pope will visit a site near the Aegean port of Izmir where the Virgin Mary is reputed to have lived and died.

The main focus of his trip will be talks on Christian unity with Patriarch Bartholomew, Istanbul-based spiritual head of the world's 250 million Orthodox Christians. But in a gesture to Muslims, Benedict will also visit Istanbul's famous Blue Mosque.

One of the few Turks really keen to meet the Pope is Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who tried to assassinate Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, in Rome in 1981.

Now serving a jail sentence in Istanbul for crimes committed in the 1970s, Agca said through his lawyer on Monday: ''I (Mehmet Ali Agca) asked the Turkish government to release me for one day so that I can discuss theological issues with (the Pope).'' The authorities are not expected to grant his request.

Reuters