From Economist.com
IT HAS been called the most hazardous journey undertaken by a Roman pontiff in modern times. Some of the hazards of this week’s papal visit to Turkey may be unavoidable, others may have been of his own making. The trip by Pope Benedict XVI, which begins on Tuesday November 28th, was first conceived as an exercise in intra-Christian diplomacy: a visit to the Patriarch Bartholomew I, the most senior bishop of the worldwide Orthodox church, who resides in Istanbul.
It was largely at the insistence of the government in Ankara that the purpose of the journey was broadened into an opportunity for the pontiff to test and possibly re-examine his hitherto sceptical view of Turkey. But the omens in recent months have not been benign. The pope upset two large sections of Turkish society with a lecture on September 12th in which he quoted (without endorsing) a Byzantine emperor who suggested that Islam had engendered nothing but violence. Devout Muslims in Turkey (and around the world) were offended by the insult to their faith. Secular-nationalist Turks bristled at the mention of a Byzantine monarch. No wonder that some leading members of Turkey’s mildly Islamist government have seemed at pains to find excuses not to meet the pontiff, although the prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, now says that he will do so.
Last-minute diplomatic moves appeared to be calming at least some of the tensions that were seething ahead of the visit. On Sunday the pope said he wanted his trip to show his “esteem and sincere friendship for Turkey”. A spokesman confirmed that Benedict would pay a visit to the Blue Mosque during his stay in Istanbul, a trip which the Vatican has presented as a “sign of respect” to Muslims. The Vatican's most senior official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, took a slightly different tack when he spoke of the prospects for Turkey's membership of the European Union.
The Vatican's official position is one of neither supporting nor opposing Turkey's candidacy. But Cardinal Bertone said he hoped that Turkey would be able to fulfil the EU's conditions. There were also signs of a warmer approach on the other side. Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said at the weekend: “we hope that this visit will be a way of ending misunderstandings between Muslims and Christians”. But in a sign of public discontent, a demonstration in Istanbul on Sunday against the pontiff's trip attracted some 20,000 protesters.
The risks are clear. Mr Gul was quoted as saying the security precautions taken by the government were more elaborate than those for the last visit by George Bush. “We cannot forget what happened in St Peter's Square in 1981”, he said. “Unfortunately the person who shot Pope John Paul II was a Turk.”
In fact, the last pope's would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, is safely incarcerated in Kartal jail in Istanbul. But his claims, from his prison cell, that the pope's life is in danger are all too believable. Within the past week, members of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves have carried out a symbolic “occupation” of the Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul (alleging that the pope might try to turn it back into a church) and it has been reported that police in Izmir have arrested several members of a group close to al-Qaeda.
Even before September, the Vatican had regarded the trip as a difficult mission. In the first place, Pope Benedict has made it clear he personally has doubts about Turkey's EU membership. A champion of the view that Europe is fundamentally Christian, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, told Le Figaro in 2004 that “Turkey has always represented a different continent, in permanent contrast to Europe”.
Despite the fact that Pope Benedict is hardly their country’s closest friend in the West, many Turkish liberals are deploring the fact that their political leaders have failed to seize the opportunity to turn the visit into a demonstration of openness, tolerance and European ideals.
While indicators suggest that Turks are growing more pious and more inclined to stress their Muslim identity, support for political Islam may be waning. Take the results of a new poll by Tesev, a think-tank which studies society and religion: the number of Turks who put their Muslim identity first has risen to 45% from 36% in 1999; but over the same period the number of people who favoured sharia law dropped from 21% to 9%. So if Pope Benedict learns anything from his trip it may be that pious Islam and political Islam are not the same thing.
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