Italian newspapers reacted sharply this week to reports that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan would not be present to receive Pope Benedict XVI during the pontiff's 28-30 November visit to Türkiye. Erdoğan is scheduled to attend a NATO summit in Riga, Latvia, on 28-29 November instead.
Italian dailies La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera both framed the overlap as a deliberate snub. The Archbishop of Izmir and president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops in Türkiye, Ruggero Franchescini, suggested to Corriere that the prime minister may have calculated that avoiding the meeting would spare him political trouble ahead of upcoming elections. Türkiye is expected to hold presidential elections in early 2007 and general elections later that year.
The Vatican sought to minimize the significance of the scheduling conflict. Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi noted that the pope's itinerary was still being finalized and that meetings with all government figures had never been guaranteed.
The visit is Benedict's first to a Muslim-majority country since becoming pope in April 2005. It comes amid lingering tensions over a September lecture he gave at the University of Regensburg, Germany, in which he cited a medieval Byzantine emperor in a discussion that many Muslims interpreted as linking their faith to violence.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in November 2006, in its own words.