KONYA - Prince Charles and his wife Camilla on Monday attended a meditational dance ritual by whirling dervishes, a mystical Islamic order dating back to the 13th-century.
Security was tight for the royal couple's visit to Konya, some 250 kilometres (155 miles) south of Ankara, where they toured the Turkish city's prominent historical sites.
They visited the mausoleum of Mawlana Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, a 13th century Sufi philospher and poet who founded the order of the whirling dervishes.
They then participated in the ritual, known as the Sema, during which white-clad dervishes twirl in harmony to music in a dance that copies the movement of planets and aims to allow help one to attain spiritual enlightenment.
The royal party then left for Catalhoyuk, a 9,000 year-old Neolithic settlement, southeast of Konya, that is being excavated by a British-led team of international archaeologists.
The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, who arrived in Turkey Sunday, are to dine with President Abdullah Gul and visit the Aegean port of Izmir and Istanbul, Turkey's economic and cultural hub during their stay until Thursday.
The 59-year-old heir to the British throne last visited Turkey in April 2005 to attend commemorations marking the 90th anniversary of the ill-fated World War I landing of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) on western Turkey's Gallipoli Peninsula.
He also visited in 2004 for the reopening of the British consulate in Istanbul, which had being targeted the year before by an Al-Qaeda bomb attack.
str-han/tw
11/26/2007 14:22 GMT