A huge explosion rocks the Pope’s motorcade as it winds through the streets of Istanbul. Amid the chaos, the Turkish security forces realise that the assassins have slipped through the net to find their target. But where is Benedict XVI?

We do not know — because the author of Attack on the Pope: Who will Kill the Pope in Istanbul? has not yet written the sequel. A real papal visit — Benedict XVI’s first to a Muslim country, which begins on Tuesday — has put the spotlight on the little-known novel with conspiracy theories to rival The Da Vinci Code.

The furore over the Pope’s speech in September, when he cited a Byzantine emperor who linked Islam and violence, has put his trip in a very different light and prompted renewed interest in Yücel Kaya’s book.

After being billed as a chance for inter-religious dialogue, the trip has become an ultra-high security affair conducted amid hopes that it will not inflame further violence. This month a gunman fired shots outside the Italian consulate in Istanbul. Further protests are expected throughout the pontiff’s visit in a country where even the Pope’s anti-Muslim image is upstaged by his opposition, when still a cardinal, to Turkish membership of the EU on cultural and religious grounds.

His predecessor, John Paul II, survived an assassination attempt in 1981 by a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, whose still-mysterious circumstances helped to inspire Kaya’s novel. “I have been following the Vatican for some years and think all the conditions are in place for an attack on the Pope. I have written this book as a warning,” he said.

According to the novel, the Pope is heading to Istanbul to resolve the 1,000-year-old schism between the Eastern and Western churches. This will lead to a united effort to spread Christianity in the Middle East. The resultant shift of power and money to Istanbul would be disastrous for the big players in the Vatican — the secretive P2 Masonic lodge and Opus Dei — so the Pope must be killed.

Kaya remains adamant that any assassination would have nothing to do with Turkey. The Turks are taking no chances. Even before Benedict XVI’s Regensburg address, three Catholic clerics were attacked, one fatally, during the wave of protests against the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

Pope Fiction

Attack on the Pope Yücel Kaya, 2006.
The pontiff is to unite the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Big players in the Vatican attempt his assassination to prevent the shift of power and money to Istanbul

The Shoes of the Fisherman Morris West, 1963.
Kiril Lakota, a Russian cardinal, is made Pope and must lead in a Western world he knows nothing about. Fifteen years later, a Pole became Pope John Paul II

Hadrian the Seventh Frederick Rolfe, 1969.
An eccentric British priest is made pontiff, redesigns the crucifix, redecorates the Vatican and canonises according to whim

Pope Joan Donna Cross, 1997.
Fictionalised account of the legend of a woman pope during the Middle Ages

Times Recommends

• Would you live on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall?
• Wish you were here, says Iraq tourist board
• Russian policeman’s corruption plea to Putin