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  • Pope visits Turkey amid Christian-Muslim tensions

    Associated Press International
    November 27, 2014 Thursday 11:31 AM GMT


    Pope visits Turkey amid Christian-Muslim tensions

    By NICOLE WINFIELD and SUZAN FRASER, Associated Press
    VATICAN CITY

    VATICAN CITY (AP) - When a pope last visited Turkey - Benedict XVI in
    2006 - Muslim-Catholic tensions were so high that the Vatican added a
    stop at Istanbul's famed Blue Mosque at the last minute in hopes of
    showing Benedict's respect for Islam.

    Pope Francis travels to Turkey this weekend amid new Muslim-Christian
    tensions and war next door, with Islamic State militants seizing
    chunks of Iraq and Syria and sending 1.6 million refugees across the
    border into Turkey.

    Francis is expected to tread lightly during his three-day visit,
    sensitive to the delicate diplomatic tensions at play between Turkey
    and the international coalition fighting the Islamic State.

    But Vatican officials say he will not shy from denouncing violence in
    God's name and voicing concern for Christians being targeted by the
    extremists. Remarkably, though, Francis will not meet with any groups
    of refugees as he has done on previous trips to the region, a clear
    sign of the Vatican's unwillingness to wade too deeply into the
    conflict.

    Here are five things to look for during Francis' visit, which begins Friday.

    TO PRAY OR NOT TO PRAY

    When Pope Paul VI made the first-ever papal visit to Turkey in 1967,
    he fell to his knees in prayer inside Haghia Sophia, the
    1,500-year-old site in Istanbul that was originally a Byzantine church
    and was turned into a mosque after the Muslim conquest of Istanbul -
    then known as Constantinople - in 1453. The Turks were not pleased.
    They staged protests, claiming Paul had violated the secular nature of
    the domed complex, which is now a museum.

    Asked if Francis would pray when he visits the massive complex on
    Saturday, the Vatican was noncommittal. "We'll see what he does,"
    spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said. "If while there the pope
    personally experiences a moment of spiritual meditation, we'll have to
    see."

    Some Islamic groups in Turkey want Haghia Sophia to be converted back
    into a mosque, and they have prayed outside the complex on the
    anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul to push their demand. The
    government says it has no plans to change Haghia Sophia's status.

    AND THE BLUE MOSQUE?

    Benedict became only the second pope to step foot in a Muslim house of
    worship when in November, 2006 he visited the 17th century Sultan
    Ahmet Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey's most important.

    There, he took off his shoes, bowed his head and closed his eyes for
    nearly a minute in prayer alongside an Islamic cleric in a dramatic
    gesture of outreach to Muslims.

    The mosque visit was added late to Benedict's schedule in a bid to
    soothe Muslim anger over his now-infamous speech in Regensburg,
    Germany linking violence to the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.

    Asked if Francis would pray in the mosque as Benedict did, Lombardi
    took pains to stress the difference between a formal, ritualistic
    prayer that a Catholic might recite in church and a respectful
    "spiritual meditation" in a place of worship of another faith.

    Turkey's ambassador to the Holy See, Mehmet Pacaci, said the tensions
    that overshadowed Benedict's visit are "mostly a forgotten issue."

    Yet there are some fresh issues with Francis. In September, the head
    of the government-run Religious Affairs Directorate and Turkey's top
    cleric called on Francis to take action to stem attacks on mosques in
    Europe, saying that as many as 70 Muslim places of worship were
    attacked in Germany this year, compared to 36 last year.

    "This can't happen through acts such as washing a young girl's feet or
    arranging inter-religious football matches and tournaments," Mehmet
    Gormez said, referring to two of Francis' interfaith initiatives.

    The two men meet on Friday in private.

    ARMENIAN 'GENOCIDE?'

    Francis also provoked Turkish anxiety when in June 2013 he told a
    visiting delegation of Armenian Chrisitans that the massacre of
    Armenians in Turkey last century was "the first genocide of the 20th
    century."

    The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was particularly close to
    the Armenian community of Buenos Aires, such that his successor as
    archbishop recently announced that Francis would celebrate a Mass on
    April 12, 2015 in St. Peter's Basilica to commemorate the centenary of
    the start of the massacre.

    Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
    Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
    by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Several
    European countries recognize the massacres as such.

    Turkey, however, denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying
    the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil
    war and unrest.

    Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the pope's genocide remarks were
    "in no way a formal or public declaration" and therefore didn't
    constitute a public assertion that genocide took place.

    PALACE DISPUTE

    Francis will be walking straight into another controversy when he
    visits Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's huge new palace on
    once-protected farm land and forest in Ankara, becoming the first
    foreign dignitary to be hosted at the lavish, 1,000-room complex.

    The palace, which dwarfs the White House and other European government
    palaces, was built at a cost of $620 million. It has drawn the ire of
    opposition parties, environmentalists, human rights activists and
    architects who say the construction is too extravagant, destroyed
    important forest land and went ahead despite a court injunction
    against it.

    Erdogan brazenly dismissed the court ruling saying: "Let them knock it
    down if they have the power."

    The Ankara branch of the Turkish Chamber of Architects sent a letter
    to the pope this month, urging him not to attend the welcoming
    ceremony on Friday at the "illegal" palace.

    Lombardi brushed off the request, saying Francis was invited to visit
    by the Turkish government and will go where the Turkish government
    wishes to receive him.

    CATHOLIC-ORTHODOX

    Technically speaking, the real reason for the visit is for Francis to
    visit the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians,
    Patriarch Bartholomew I.

    The two major branches of Christianity represented by Bartholomew and
    Francis split in 1054 over differences in opinion on the power of the
    papacy, and the two spiritual heads will participate in an ecumenical
    liturgy and sign a joint declaration in the ongoing attempt to bridge
    the divide and reunite the churches.

    Ties are already warm: Bartholomew became the first ecumenical
    patriarch to attend a papal installation since the schism when Francis
    took over as pope in March 2013. The two have met since on several
    occasions, including during a visit in Jerusalem in May to commemorate
    the 50th anniversary of the landmark encounter there of Pope Paul VI
    and Bartholomew's predecessor, Patriarch Athenagoras.

    ___

    Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey.

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