Turkey's Erdogan to meet Pope Francis at Vatican on Feb. 5

Turkey’s president

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president

Turkish President Recep Erdogan is scheduled to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican on Feb. 5, the Vatican press office said on Tuesday.

No details about the agenda of the meeting were given.

It would be Erdogan’s first visit to the Vatican.

Turkey is a key regional player in the Middle East, so the conflict in Syria, the plight of refugees in the region and the status of Jerusalem are likely to come up in the talks.

Erdogan and the Pope discussed Jerusalem, which the U.S.want to recognise as Israel’s capital, in spite widespread opposition from the international community, in a phone call in late December.

At the time, Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu said both leaders agreed to meet to discuss bilateral relations and international issues, without giving a specific date.

Dialogue between Muslims and Christians is another possible topic for Francis and Erdogan.

Relations between Turkey and the Vatican turned frosty in June 2016, when Francis referred to the World War I mass killings of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman troops as “genocide.”

Ankara, which vehemently rejects the use of the term genocide to describe the killings, reacted by accusing the pope of spreading “lies and slander.”

On Nov 29, 2014, Pope Francis met with various Christian and Muslim leaders in Istanbul, on the second day of his trip to Turkey.

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The Roman Catholic leader prayed alongside a senior Muslim cleric and later called for Christian unity.

The Pope continued his visit to Turkey by meeting local leaders of the Armenian, Syrian, Chaldean and Latin Catholic churches.

They form small Christian minorities in an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim Turkey.

Less than one per cent of Turkey’s 76 million inhabitants are Catholic.

He celebrated mass in the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, before a congregation that included Protestants and the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox community, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew.

The Orthodox leader obliged, kissing Francis’ bowed head.

The two major branches of Christianity represented by Bartholomew and Francis split in 1054 over differences on the primacy of the papacy, giving particular resonance to Francis’ display of deference.

In his sermon, Francis appealed to Christians in Turkey and the world over to unite in the face of discord, calling the diversity of the Christian faith a “tremendous potentiality.”

The Pope’s visit to Turkey drew strong media attention, given that Turkey borders Iraq and Syria where the self-declared Islamic State militant group is waging a campaign of persecution against those who do not follow its radical doctrine.

Analysts see the three-day visit as a test of Francis’ ability to build bridges between faiths, as well as establish and strengthen ties with Muslim leaders.

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