Tens of thousands of Muslims and nationalists took to the streets of Istanbul yesterday to vent their anger at the imminent arrival in Turkey of Pope Benedict XVI. Amid a sea of red-and-white Turkish flags and green Islamic bandannas, speakers at a rally denounced the Vatican as a centre of a western conspiracy against the country and the Islamic world.The Pope, who arrives in Ankara tomorrow, sought to mend fences ahead of the four-day trip by offering his "esteem and sincere friendship" to the country. The Vatican said he would visit Istanbul's 17th century Blue Mosque, his first visit to a mosque as Pope. But the gestures cut little ice with a crowd of some 30,000. "You are the representative of evil," the main speaker, Recai Kutan, leader of the radical wing of Islamic politics in Turkey, told the Pope. "We don't want to see you here unless you apologise."
It remained unclear whether he would meet the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Mr Erdogan has come under fire for claiming he is too busy to see the Pope, while the pontiff is said to have declined an offer of a dinner hosted by the foreign minister, Abdullah Gul.
Speakers yesterday repeatedly said that the Pope, who is making his first visit to a Muslim country, held Muslims in contempt and was a cheerleader of the west's "war against Islam" launched after 9/11. He is also strongly identified with opposition to Turkey joining the EU. Filiz Turan, 23, said the Pope was leading a "crusade" against Islam. "He wants to prove that Istanbul is a Christian city. He calls Muslims bloody when Islam is a religion of love."
The focus of the Pope's visit is to lobby for the freedom of Christian minorities in Turkey, which is 95% Muslim but is constitutionally a secular democracy. Roman Catholicism and other variants of western Christianity are not recognised by the government. There have been several incidents of anti-Christian violence this year, including the murder of a Catholic priest in his church on the Black Sea. The Pope is due to have talks with the head of the Eastern Orthodox church, Bartholomew I, who is also viewed with suspicion by Turks.