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Papal visit poses security challenge for Turkey

ANKARA: Tight security is being put in place for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Turkey next week amid fears of a backlash against his controversial remarks on Islam, coupled with recent attacks targeting priests.

The pontiff’s hosts are keen to convey to the world an image of hospitality and religious tolerance - values Turks uphold as a heritage of the Ottoman Empire under which Islam, Christianity and Judaism co-existed for centuries in relative peace.

Ankara also aims to highlight its position as a bridge uniting East and West as its main argument against strong European opposition to its struggling bid to join the European Union.

The mood on the ground, however, is far from what the government would have liked ahead of the pontiff’s November 28-December 1 visit, which precedes a critical EU decision on how to proceed with Turkey’s troubled membership talks.

The pope’s remarks in September linking Islam and violence triggered outrage throughout the Muslim world and a string of attacks against Christian clergymen in Turkey this year, virtually unheard of in the past, have fuelled concerns.

A teenager in the northern city of Trabzon shot dead a Roman Catholic priest in February, at a time when the Muslim world was in an uproar over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published in European newspapers.

Five days later, another Roman Catholic priest was harassed in Izmir, in the west, a third was stabbed in the northern city of Samsun in July and, earlier this month, a man fired in the air outside an Italian consular building in Istanbul, shouting slogans against the papal visit. AFP

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