Both Ankara and the Vatican played down reports that Prime Minister Recep Erdogan would be absent for most of Pope Benedict XVI's late-November visit to Türkiye. Erdogan's office cited scheduling conflicts: a NATO summit in Riga on 28-29 November and a military council session the following day.
Benedict, making his first trip to a Muslim country since his election in April 2005, was to meet President Ahmet Necdet Sezer in Ankara on 28 November and Grand Mufti Ali Bardakoglu, then travel to Ephesus and Istanbul, where he would meet Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I on the feast of Saint Andrew.
The visit came under strain after Benedict's September lecture at the University of Regensburg, in which he cited a 14th-century Byzantine emperor in remarks widely read as linking Islam to violence. Bardakoglu had condemned the comments but later called the pope's subsequent expressions of regret a positive step. Benedict had also been dubbed the "anti-Turkish pope" in Türkiye for opposing the country's EU membership as Cardinal Ratzinger.
In Istanbul, a 26-year-old identified as Ibrahim Ak fired four shots into the air outside the Italian consul's residence in protest against the visit and was arrested. Italian press treated Erdogan's absence as a deliberate snub; the archbishop of Izmir attributed it to electoral calculation, with Türkiye facing presidential elections in early 2007 and a general vote later that year.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in November 2006, in its own words.