Expectations raised by the Pope’s visit to Turkey (28 November-1 December) are growing. “The hijacking of the [Turkish Airlines] plane on 3 October does not place in doubt Benedict XVI’s visit. The programme of the apostolic journey is now being finalized. The visit will especially prove fruitful for dialogue with our Muslim brothers”, commented Mons. Georges Marovitch, spokesman of the Turkish Bishops’ Conference, in a briefing to SIR . However, the hijacking of the passenger airline by the 30-year-old Hakan Ekinci, a man already known to the Turkish security forces, had raised fears among Turkey’s Catholic episcopate. “Initially we were anxious because it was thought, after all the controversy following the Pope’s lecture in Regensburg, that this was an attempt to prevent the Pope’s visit – explains the spokesman -, especially after a Turkish paper on 3 October had published a message in which Al Qaeda threatened to kill the Pope and any Muslim who dared to meet him”. “Then – continued Marovitch – we discovered the hijacker was a young man who did not want to do his military service and had already fled the country once before for the same purpose. I also learn he’s said to be a Christian but, as far as I know, he does not belong to the Catholic community. He could be one of the many conversions within the Protestant communities”.
