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Pope's Turkey visit an unexpected success

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  • Pope's Turkey visit an unexpected success

    Financial Times, UK
    Dec 1 2006

    Pope's Turkey visit an unexpected success
    By Vincent Boland in Ankara

    Published: December 1 2006 17:08 | Last updated: December 1 2006
    17:08

    It was amid the delicate and rather spartan splendour of the
    400-year-old Blue Mosque that Pope Benedict XVI made the most
    dramatic gesture of his visit to Turkey. The leader of the Roman
    Catholic Church, flanked by the white-robed Grand Mufti of Istanbul,
    turned towards Mecca and prayed.

    By common consent among much of the Turkish media and the public, it
    was the moment the Pope overcame at least some of the suspicion with
    which he is regarded in Turkey. `Peace in Istanbul' was the headline
    in Milliyet. The papers carried front-page photographs of the two men
    at prayer, and doves featured prominently in the gifts they
    exchanged.

    As the Pope returned to Rome on Friday after his first visit to a
    Muslim country, the Vatican may be troubled that the image of him
    praying at the mosque will completely overshadow the original aim of
    the four-day trip - a meeting with Bartholomew, the Ecumenical
    Patriarch of Constantinople and leader of the world's Greek Orthodox
    Church, to forge Christian unity.

    For Turkey, however, the trip can be seen as a political triumph,
    even if the ever-patient residents of Istanbul were beginning to vent
    their rage at the excessively intrusive and heavy-handed security
    presence. This caused chaos throughout the Pope's time in the city;
    it also illustrated the overblown expectations surrounding his
    presence on Turkish soil - that it could spark violent protests and
    perhaps even an attempt on the Pope's life.

    Ever since his September speech, however, when he appeared to link
    Islam and violence, this trip's political agenda rapidly overtook its
    religious one.

    The two aspects of his time in Turkey considered the most important
    in helping the Pope to put his reputation for Islamophobia behind him
    - his meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, and
    the visit to the Blue Mosque - were last-minute additions to a
    crowded schedule, made at the insistence of his hosts.

    `These were the unavoidable and inevitable steps the Pope had to
    climb so that he could get his meeting with the Patriarch,' said
    Tayfun Atay, an expert on religion and society at Ankara University.
    `The original aim was not to ease Christian/Muslim tensions, but that
    is where the trip may have been most successful.'

    The trip impressed the Pope. As he was leaving he told Muammer Guler,
    the governor of Istanbul, that he was leaving a part of his heart in
    the city, according to local news reports. And if it cured him of his
    perceived Islamophobia, the intriguing question is whether it also
    cured the Turks of their own religious phobias.

    These phobias are largely held by nationalists. But they have given
    rise to a wider suspicion of religious minorities. Though there are
    only about 100,000 Christians in the country today, human rights
    groups have accused the secular state of discriminating against them
    and of appropriating church properties without compensation. The Pope
    made a pointed reference to religious rights during his trip, but it
    seems to have been largely ignored in the hoopla surrounding the
    visit to the mosque.

    It is likely that religious freedom will become an issue in Turkey's
    accession to the European Union, if that ever happens. Mustafa
    Soykut, a historian of religion at Middle East Technical University,
    says the origins of the state's hostility to religious minorities
    dates to the role of the Greek Orthodox Church in fomenting Greek
    separatism during the Ottoman era.

    `The state perceives a threat because the church is seen as a sort of
    Greek fifth column,' he says, adding: `It's in Turkey's best
    interests to give religious minorities their rights, especially the
    Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches. These people are Turkish
    citizens, after all.'
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