TURKEY: THE PONTIFF'S "FICTIONAL" ASSASSINATION

Fiction causes friction for Pope
Suna Erdem, Istanbul
November 27, 2006

A HUGE explosion rocks the Pope's motorcade as it winds through the streets of Istanbul.
Amid the chaos, the Turkish security forces realise that the assassins have slipped through the net to find their target.

But where is Benedict XVI?

We don't know - because the author of Attack on the Pope: Who will Kill the Pope in Istanbul? hasn't written the sequel yet.

A real papal visit - the Pope's first to a Muslim country, which begins tomorrow - has put the spotlight on the little-known novel with conspiracy theories to rival The Da Vinci Code.

The furore over the Pope's speech in September, when he cited a Byzantine emperor who linked Islam and violence, has put his trip in a very different light and prompted renewed interest in Yucel Kaya's book.

After being billed as a chance for much-needed inter-religious dialogue, the trip has become an ultra-high-security affair conducted amid hopes that it will not inflame further violence.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former radical Islamist whose mantra is "dialogue between civilisations", has decided to ditch the ideology and go to a meeting in Latvia rather than meet the Pope, fearing that it would lose him support.

Turkish newspapers gloat that President Ahmet Necdet Sezer will apply "second-class" procedures when he meets the pontiff.

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Pertinent Links:

1) Fiction causes friction for Pope