TURKEY:"Cool" would be a word to describe the atmosphere in Ankara yesterday, and it applied as much to the weather as the reception accorded Pope Benedict. At the airport, and clearly tense, he emerged from his plane in a long white coat to be greeted civilly, if without noticeable warmth, by Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other dignitaries.
Mr Erdogan's presence was uncertain until Monday night, too late even for inclusion in the Pope's prepared scripts.
It meant Benedict improvised in later speeches to comment on his "great pleasure to greet and meet his excellency prime minister Erdogan at the airport", as he put it at the Religious Affairs Directorate yesterday evening.
At the airport he and prime minister Erdogan held a 20- minute meeting under the stern eye of Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, whose visible presence may have helped in prompting the most public volte face in this Pope's career. He, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had opposed Turkish entry to to EU because "Turkey is founded upon Islam . . . Thus the entry of Turkey into the EU would be anti-historical," sang a different tune (if slightly off key) yesterday.
Asked directly about his attitude to Turkey's entry to the EU by prime minister Erdogan - whose presence at the airport was no doubt assisted by a Vatican disclosure on Sunday that it did not oppose Turkish entry to the EU - the Pope replied that while on the one hand the Vatican was not an EU state and so was not in a position to give a judgment on the matter from a political point of view, it did appreciate the steps Turkey was taking to join the EU, to be more involved and to share common principles and values.
Hardly a ringing endorsement, but presented by prime minister Erdogan afterwards as support for Turkish entry to the EU - an interpretation Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi did not contradict when speaking to this reporter later.
The route into Ankara was quiet, no cheering crowds, few flags waving, no traffic - it was blocked off - but police everywhere. It was the same at the Anitkabir - the magnificent mausoleum which houses the remains of Ataturk. Again all those present were police and media with dignitaries. No members of the public.
Surrounded by men in black, the Pope followed two soldiers carrying a wreath of red and white carnations up the steps to the mausoleum, led by another soldier bearing a sword. On the wreath was a ribbon which read simply "Papa Benedict XVI". It was a brief ceremony which took place as a helicoper fluttered overhead in a hazy blue sky through which, moments before he arrived, the call to prayer had reverberated.
After the wreath-laying ceremony he went to see a lifesize model of Ataturk wearing a tuxedo, nearby. As he left, the photographers shouted "Benedetto", and he stopped at the steps to pose before going to his car and doing so again. "Thank you Papa", a photographer shouted after him.
The Religious Affairs Directorate building was sealed off by police, all armed, some with riot shields, two armed personnel carriers, an eight-lane highway nearby closed to traffic, a helicopter overhead, a call to prayer as dusk fell, and legions of media.
The Pope was received curtly on the red-carpeted steps there by Turkey's president of religious affairs Dr Ali Bardakoglu. They went inside directly. Dr Bardakoglu, a Sunni Muslim cleric, was outraged by the Pope's use of a quotation about Muhammad from a 1391 dialogue in his Regensburg address last September. The Pope quoted medieval Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who said "show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
Dr Bardakoglu said the Pope's use of the quotation represented an "abhorrent, hostile and prejudiced point of view". He said that, while Muslims might express criticism of Christianity, they would never defame the Bible or Jesus Christ.
He hoped the Pope's Regensburg address did not reflect "hatred in his heart" towards Islam, he said. He spoke similarly, though about "Islamophobia", in his address yesterday.
The body language was much more relaxed when both men arrived to exchange speeches on the stage of an auditorium at the directorate later. It was three-quarters full of media, with four rows of dignitaries at the front. Dr Bardakoglu warmly clasped the Pope's hands as they posed for photographs.
In his address the Pope quoted a medieval predecessor this time - Gregory VII - who, speaking of what Christianity and Islam owed one another; said in "a thousand and seventy six" (as he put it in English) to a Muslim prince in North Africa, "we believe in one God, albeit in a different manner, and because we praise him and worship him every day as creator and ruler of the world".
He also quoted a more immediate predecessor, Pope John XXIII, who was papal nuncio to Turkey for 10 years. Pope John wrote: "I am fond of the Turks, to whom the lord has sent me . . . I love the Turks, I appreciate the natural qualities of these people who have their own place reserved in the march of civilisation."
And Pope Benedict wished to make his own the words of his immediate predecessor, Pope John Paul, who on a visit to Turkey in 1979 had said of Christians and Muslims: "I wonder if it is not urgent . . . to recognise and develop the spiritual bonds that unite us, in order to preserve and promote together, for the benefit of all men, 'peace, liberty, social justice, and moral values'."
Yes, a cool day in Ankara yesterday, but one which witnessed a small step forward for mankind and a giant step for the man formerly known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.