The Role of the Religious Actors in Achieving the Utopia of Alliance of Civilizations: Pope's Visit to Turkey

In 2005, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, launched a new initiative called Alliance of Civilizations which is co-sponsored by the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and the Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain and supported by the British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The motivation behind the Alliance of Civilizations Initiative is to bridge divides between Islamic and Western societies which has become more significant after the September 11th and to establish a coalition which will advance mutual respect for religious beliefs and traditions. Alliance of Civilizations is certainly an antithetical move against Samuel P. Hungtington’s clash of civilizations theory. It aims at overcoming prejudice, misconceptions, misperceptions, and polarization which potentially threaten the world peace. In this regard, this is a difficult task; deliberately it is a utopia. This paper aims at analyzing the role of the religious actors in achieving the objectives of the Initiative and takes Pope's visit to Istanbul in November 2006 as a sample case to be discussed upon. Pope's visit to Turkey is considered as a symbolic motive having political, historical, cultural and social elements that distinguish it from any other actor's potential visit to Turkey. The main question of the study is to find out the role of this visit in creating tolerance and encouraging intercultural dialogue in the international political arena; namely for the accession of Turkey to the European Union. In the study, secondary sources are used to identify the issues involved and a special coverage of national and international press is also included.