Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

A tense time for a papal visit

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • A tense time for a papal visit

    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."
Working...
X