Pope to be first foreign guest at Turkey's new presidential palace

Pope Francis is set to be the first house guest at Turkey's new presidential palace during a visit to Turkey at the end of the month.

During his three-day visit, the spiritual leader of the world's one billion Catholics will meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkey's top Muslim cleric, Mehmet Görmez. Erdoğan is scheduled to welcome Pope Francis as Vatican's Head of State with an "A-class" ceremony that will be organized at the gargantuan presidential palace in Ankara, which recently sparked a public debate due to its cost.

Known officially as the Presidential Palace but dubbed universally as the Ak Saray (White Palace), the complex takes up an area of 200,000 square metres (2.1 million square feet), has 1,000 rooms and draws its architectural inspiration from Turkey’s Ottoman and Seljuk heritage.

Controversy over the palace soared when Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek told a parliamentary budget committee last week that the total cost so far was 1.37 billion Turkish lira ($615 million), around double the original price tag.

Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Mustafa Kemal's Atatürk's mausoleum in Ankara, before going to Istanbul on the second day of his program in Turkey. In Istanbul, visits to Hagia Sophia, which was the largest Orthodox cathedral once, as well as to the Blue Mosque, Saint Esprit Catholic Church and the Patriarchate are in the schedule.

'Overcoming the obstacles'

The visit is also seen as an opportunity to improve relations between the Eastern and the Western churches. The 76-year-old Argentinian pontiff delivered a speech to the Orientale Lumen Foundation last month where he said he wished to "overcome the obstacles that still divide us."

According to the Vatican, the...