Lord High Caliph Erdogan

Known colloquially as a hot potato, one has landed in Pope Francis's reluctant lap. Echoes of his chastising the Catholic Church's bishops and archbishops when some among them have used church funds to aggrandize their positions within the church by building lavishly sumptuous palaces and his chiding that those who serve the church should live modestly and by example mirror Christ's adage that it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven surfaces.

But of course, that is the god of Christian worship, not to be confused by the god of Islamic faith, who, though many claim to be one and the same, must not be, since as any Islamist will attest, Islam is the one true faith; all others pretenders. And in Turkey the long hiatus between the Ottoman Empire and the Ataturkian revolution that transformed Turkey into a secular state has come to a conclusion, courtesy of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

A latter-day reincarnation of the Prophet himself, he has groomed Turkey to acknowledge that he is worthy of his own caliphate, and he the caliph. A position that matches the dignity and honour of his position and his faith. To demonstrate all of which he took the extravagant initiative of having a palace of one thousand rooms of truly grand design built to honour him. This, an edifice to his power and his glory, is the welcome site for Pope Francis when he visits Turkey this month.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seen ahead of the welcoming ceremony within Turkish Republic Day celebrations on the 91st anniversary of foundation at Turkey's new Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey on October 29, 2014.   Getty Images

Where the Pope is planning to speak loudly and beseechingly on the threat of Islamist extremism and how it compromises the safety and security of Christianity in Muslim lands. That Christianity predated Islam and those lands were first Christian quite beside the point. The persecution of Christians in Syria and Iraq is foremost in the mind of the good Pope. With his three-day visit, Pope Francis appears to be on the cusp of achieving yet another of his many firsts; an invitation to the palace.

A palace which was just incidentally built over parkland that Kemal Ataturk, the architect of modern Turkey had bequeathed in perpetuity to the people of Turkey. A slight inconvenience which Mr. Erdogan had no problem overcoming simply by diktat and that, friends, was that. Just as his decision to turn a popular green space in Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park into a shopping mall bred huge discontent among the populace and a protest movement that was muzzled by police action.

The $700-million cost of the White Palace though condemned by many Turks as a waste of money, is a reflection of the high regard in which President Erdogan is held, albeit mostly by himself, but his is the power and the glory and the corruption that he has drowned Turkey within reflects his untouchability. He is to Turkey what royalty and sacred theism combined represent, a latter-day ruler of divine provenance.

The suspense lies in the manner in which Pope Francis, himself the closest mankind has aspired to touching the hand of god, a man of repute and modesty taking the Vatican and the church in a new direction, eschewing pomp for the greater good of the Catholic weal, will manage to courteously extricate himself rather than conferring the illusion of godly blessing on the imprimatur of a political scoundrel practising to become a global caliph.

A picture shows the new Ak Saray presidential palace (White Palace) on the outskirts of Ankara on October 29, 2014. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unveiled his new presidential palace on the outskirts of Ankara, denounced by ecologists as an environmental blight and by the opposition as new evidence of his autocratic tendencies.  Getty Images