ISTANBUL, TURKEY — In the largest protest yet against the impending arrival here of Pope Benedict XVI, more than 20,000 Turks filled a town square Sunday to denounce the visit as an affront to Islam.
Emotions are running high in this predominantly Muslim nation over a speech the pope made in September that was widely construed throughout the Islamic world as an insult to the Muslim faith and the prophet Muhammad, on whose teachings it is based.
Amid tight security, youths waving red Turkish flags and brandishing placards, which read "Pope don't test our patience," chanted "\o7Allahu akbar!"\f7 (God is great!) as speakers took turns condemning the pontiff for his remarks.
"The pope's speech was a provocation. It is part of a devilish plan to prevent the tilt toward Islam," said Recai Kutan, head of the Islamist Felicity Party, which organized the event.
Benedict is scheduled to arrive in Ankara, the capital, on Tuesday for a four-day pilgrimage that also will take him to a shrine to the Virgin Mary near Izmir and finally to Istanbul. Small but vocal groups of hard-line nationalists and radical Islamists have been protesting the visit.
This is by far the most problematic journey in Benedict's 19-month-old papacy.
His primary purpose is to reach out to Istanbul-based Orthodox Christians, who split from the Roman Catholic Church 1,000 years ago. But because of reaction to the speech he made in Regensburg, Germany, the trip also is aimed at improving ties with Muslims.
In that speech at the university where he once taught, the pope linked Islam to violence and quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor who disdained the faith. The comments provoked outrage in the Muslim world, and Benedict later apologized for the reaction -- though not the general message of his speech, which was that faith must be based on reason and not violence.
The Vatican has made it clear that the pope is traveling to Turkey chiefly to meet the leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, an ethnic Greek. Although he is a Turkish citizen and has lobbied hard for membership for Turkey in the European Union, Bartholomew is mistrusted by many here as a "Greek agent" seeking to reestablish Christian influence in this country.
Wary of the public mood, Turkey's moderate Islamic-led government has shied away from according the pope the level of hospitality customary for visiting heads of state. Many Cabinet ministers, including Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, will be out of town when Benedict arrives.
