The rituals of the "clash of civilisations" are by now well established. Somebody somewhere in the west "insults Islam" - Salman Rushdie writes a book; a Danish paper publishes a cartoon; the Pope makes a speech - and the demonstrators take to the streets. What better way to prove that Islam is a religion of peace than to burn the Pope in effigy?

For years, secular, westernised Turkey was regarded as largely immune from this sort of zealotry. But some of the fiercest reaction to the Pope's recent speech came from Turkey. Before the pontiff issued his apology, Salih Kapusuz, the deputy leader of the ruling AKP party, likened him to Hitler and Mussolini.