Los Angeles Times
Nov 25 2006
A tense time for a papal visit
Turkey, which doesn’t recognize the Roman Catholic Church, is still
rankled by Benedict’s comments on Islam.
By Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer
November 25, 2006
‘It’s a kind of preemptive intolerance: Don’t let it flourish because
it might take over. Everyone is afraid of something.’
– Mustafa Akyol – Writer and expert on interfaith relations, on why
the vast majority of the Turkish people mistrust Christianity.
Protection
click to enlargeISTANBUL, TURKEY – To reach Turkey’s most important
Roman Catholic church, a visitor must scour a traffic-choked street
to find the metal doors, walk down a flight of stairs, cross a
courtyard and finally step into the consecrated basilica.
Inside the Holy Spirit Cathedral here, the lights remain low until a
minute before evening Mass, and then reveal frescoed ceilings with
gold-trimmed arches, 22 crystal chandeliers and blond-marble columns.
On this night, 14 worshipers dot the pews.
In the Turkish capital, Ankara, the only Catholic church is even more
discreet: It is marked simply by a French flag.
When Pope Benedict XVI travels to Turkey next week, he will be making
his first trip to a predominantly Muslim country at a moment of
diplomatic fragility.
He also will be traversing some of the most ancient and revered
milestones of Christianity, in a land where Christianity is
disappearing and where non-Muslim minorities complain of systemic
discrimination, harassment and violence against them.
It is a complex agenda. The pope’s main purpose is to meet with the
Istanbul-based spiritual leader of the world’s 250 million Eastern
Orthodox Christians in a show of ecumenical solidarity. But he must
also use the visit to attempt to repair the damage from comments he
has made that cast Islam in a negative light.
Among Turkey’s nearly 70 million Muslims, reaction to Benedict’s
visit ranges from disinterest to intense anger. A man opened fire
early this month on the Italian Consulate in Istanbul, telling police
later that he wanted to "strangle" the pope. A nationalist gang
called the Gray Wolves is staging regular demonstrations protesting
the pontiff’s arrival.
Among the estimated 100,000 Christians who live in Turkey, there is
hope that Benedict’s presence will cast light on their difficulties.
The Roman Catholic Church is not legally recognized in Turkey. It
functions largely attached to foreign embassies; its priests do not
wear their collars in public.
Most Christians in Turkey are of the Armenian, Greek and other
Orthodox denominations, and although most of these are recognized in
the Turkish Constitution as minority communities, they face severe
restrictions on property ownership and cannot build places of worship
or run seminaries to train their clerics.
Such hardships make it almost impossible for Christians to sustain
and expand their communities, advocates say. The Greek Orthodox, for
example, have dwindled to no more than 3,000, just 2% of the
community’s size in the 1960s.
Fueled by a vitriolic, and growing, potion of nationalism and Islamic
radicalism, spasms of violence have led to the killing of one priest
this year, the beatings of two others and the burning of a Christian
prayer center. Christian tombstones are often vandalized and property
frequently confiscated by authorities.
Turkey has come under repeated criticism from Western human rights
organizations and the Vatican for its failure to promote religious
freedom. Turkey is an Islamic but secular country; in reality, this
means that all religious activity, including mosques and imams, is
controlled by the government.
"Obviously, more needs to be done to promote religious freedom for
all denominations," Ali Bardakoglu, president of Turkey’s powerful
Religious Affairs Directorate, said in an interview. But he defended
the government’s treatment of minorities, contending that Christians
and other non-Muslims do not face serious problems.
Bardakoglu was one of the most emphatic critics of Benedict after the
pope delivered a speech in Regensburg, Germany, in September that
denounced Islamic violence and quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor
who disdained Islam and its prophet, Muhammad. Adding insult to
injury, as far as many Turks were concerned, the emperor was
defending Constantinople, cradle of Orthodox Christianity, against
the Muslim conquest that gave the city its name today: Istanbul.
Bardakoglu said the pope was welcome in Turkey despite the speech,
which touched off outrage throughout the Muslim world. And although
he said he accepted Benedict’s subsequent explanations, Bardakoglu
did not appear completely appeased.
"It is unfortunate that there are circles within Western society that
attempt to blacken the name of our religion and are infected with
Islamophobia," he said. "The role of the Vatican and the pope should
be to help fight stereotypes. Rather than open debate, they should be
seeking to heal wounds."
In a remarkable gesture, the pope will meet with Bardakoglu, the
country’s top religious figure, at his ministry, a modern, imposing
building on Ankara’s outskirts, on the first day of his Turkey visit.
Bardakoglu’s directorate commands a huge budget and oversees all of
Turkey’s imams.
Originally, the Vatican expected Bardakoglu to call on the pope at
the Vatican Embassy, as protocol would have dictated. But the Turks
refused. After a series of negotiations, the pope agreed to go to
Bardakoglu. "It is a gesture of goodwill," a senior Vatican official
said.
The pope’s controversial presence in Turkey represents a balancing
act for the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which
regards itself a vital bridge between the West and East, a way for
Westerners to deal with a modern and democratic Islam. But it also
cannot appear too cozy with a pontiff who, in the view of many, is
not fond of Muslims or Turks.
Erdogan is not scheduled to receive Benedict, citing a previous
commitment to attend a NATO summit in Latvia on Tuesday and
Wednesday. And there is no plan for the prime minister to see him off
when the pope departs Dec. 1.
Both the Vatican and Turkish officials said this was not a snub, but
Erdogan told visiting reporters in Istanbul last month, "You can’t
expect me to arrange my timetable according to the pope."
The frictions are rooted in history. The Ottoman Empire, which ruled
the region for more than six centuries, was relatively tolerant of
Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims. But before and during World
War I, Western powers collaborated with Christian and other
minorities to bring down the Ottomans. In the carnage that followed,
as many as 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered, a similar number
of ethnic Greeks expelled and 1 million Turks deported from Greece.
The 1923 Lausanne Treaty founded the Republic of Turkey and
recognized minorities. But deep mistrust persists, and even today
among ardent nationalists, Christians are seen as a potential fifth
column.
"It’s a kind of preemptive intolerance: Don’t let it flourish because
it might take over," said Mustafa Akyol, a writer and expert on
interfaith relations. "Everyone is afraid of something."
Akyol, a Muslim, said he once wrote a column advocating that the
museum of St. Sophia, or Aya Sofya, in Istanbul be returned to its
original use, that of a church. The response was harsh: He was
threatened and castigated as a "secret Greek." The pope is scheduled
to visit St. Sophia, built in the 6th century as a Byzantine church
and converted to a mosque in the 15th century by the Ottomans.
The mere rumor that the pope might say a prayer at the site has led
to a bit of hysteria. Islamic newspaper Milli Gazete, in a front-page
commentary last week, lashed out at the government for permitting the
"Crusaders" to plan to bless the former church in a brazen attempt to
"revive Byzantium."
For their part, Turkish officials have sought to minimize the
pontiff’s main mission on this trip: to worship alongside Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew I, head of the world’s Orthodox Christians. The
coming together of the two religious leaders is meant as a bridging
of the 1,000-year-old rift between the two ancient branches of
Christianity.
Such frictions notwithstanding, Turkey, compared with many Muslim
countries, is relatively hospitable to non-Muslims. But its failure
to make more progress on freedom-of-religion issues has been an
important stumbling block in its years-long campaign to join the
European Union.
It is EU pressure that has nudged Ankara along in easing some of the
restrictions on minorities; for example, a Protestant group in
Istanbul has for the first time been allowed to open a church.
"The EU reforms give people a sense of hope that there is light at
the end of the tunnel," said Greek Orthodox Father Alexander
Karloutsos. "It’s been very dark here."