Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2007, pages 34-35

Talking Turkey

Visiting Turkey, Pope Seeks to Improve Relations With Muslims, Orthodox Christians

By Jon Gorvett

WHILE THE PROSPECT of Pope Benedict XVI’s late November visit to Turkey filled many here with dread at the potential for catastrophe, the visit passed off peacefully and largely successfully for the Vatican.

Yet the visit also cast a spotlight on the continuing disharmony between much of Catholic Europe and Muslim Turkey, as well as shining a torch on a simmering dispute within the Christian churches of the East. Indeed, healing these divisions may turn out to be a lot tougher than putting papal relations with the Muslim world back on track.

It was Islamic outrage that lay behind many fears for the pope’s safety during his visit to Turkey. The trip came against the background of his remarks during a September lecture at the University of Regensburg in which the pope quoted the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus. The emperor had described Islam as “evil and inhuman” and alleged that it had been spread by fire and sword, on the instructions of Muhammad.

Given the woefully mangled state of communications that exists between radical Islamic groups and the Western world, these comments were then attributed to the living pope rather than the long-dead emperor. Nor was it difficult to make this stick, given the historical track record of crusades, Pope Benedict’s position on the conservative side of the Catholic church, the Vatican’s continuing stress on Europe as a continent of Christian values and traditions, and the widespread belief in Turkey and elsewhere that there is a strong crusading, religious element to Western policy in Iraq, Palestine and Afghanistan. While the pope’s predecessor, John Paul II, may have come out against the Iraq war, there has been much tarring with the same brush in the meantime. Pope Benedict also had not apologized for his remarks, although he had expressed regret at the upset they had caused.

The demonstrations against the papal visit thus began some days before the pope arrived. There was even an armed incident when a protester fired a pistol outside the Vatican’s consulate in Istanbul, and 15,000 police were mobilized to ensure the pontiff’s safety.

As it turned out, however, while there were some protests during the visit, there were also welcoming crowds and a generally positive press. Indeed, there was a sense among many Turks that the expectation that there would be violence was just another Western prejudice, ignoring the very real way in which most Turks welcome visitors, whatever their beliefs.

There also was a sense of events going full circle, too, when while visiting Istanbul the pope became only the second pontiff in history to enter a mosque. On this occasion, the pope prayed as well—a gesture that was widely appreciated, leaving Istanbul’s chief mufti, Mustafa Cagrici, commenting that the act was “even more meaningful than an apology.” It was perhaps fitting that this reconciliation had been achieved in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque, not 200 yards from the buried ruins of the Great Palace, one-time home to Emperor Manual II Paleologus.

That historical reference, however, was undoubtedly not one many in the papal or Turkish delegations wanted to pursue, given the outrage about Islam being spread by fire and sword. Nonetheless, the reasons why the Great Palace lies buried cannot have been far from the minds of the people whom the pope had really come to see—the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate

Located in Istanbul, the patriarchate is the “first among equals” in the Christian Orthodox world, with Patriarch Bartholomew its leader. Despite its huge significance within Orthodoxy, however, the role of the patriarchate in Turkey is minimal, given that the number of Greek Orthodox believers in the country is now only a few thousand. Nevertheless, the patriarchate leads the global Orthodox communion in its negotiations with other churches, including the Catholic Church, with whom it has been attempting reconciliation in recent years, not a few centuries after the Great Schism of 1054. However, Orthodoxy has also recently been in renewed dispute with the Catholic Church, largely over Eastern Europe, where both churches accuse the other of poaching believers.

There also have been disputes within Orthodoxy, notably over the continued role of the Istanbul patriarchate as first among equals. In recent years there have been rival bids for a leadership position from both Athens and Moscow, although so far Istanbul has held its own, backed up by the U.S. church, in particular.

This has not been easy, however, given the narrow base of the Orthodox Church in Turkey and also given some restrictive laws imposed by the government in Ankara. For a start, Turkish authorities do not recognize the patriarchate as ecumenical, but only as a local church. There are restrictions on what such a body can do, particularly in terms of funding and maintaining property and religious foundations. Meanwhile, Turkish law says that the patriarch himself must be a Turkish citizen—Bartholomew was born on the Turkish island of Gokceada—and, given that at most there are 5,000 believers in Turkey, many of whom are elderly, this presents a huge problem of succession. Nor is this helped by the fact that, under laws aimed at curbing religious schools, the Greek Orthodox seminary in Istanbul was closed back in the 1970s. Without trained priests, there is even less chance of the church being able to perpetuate itself.

Under such pressure, a meeting with the pope undoubtedly helped reinforce the Patriarchate’s position within Orthodoxy, while also serving to raise the issue of what supporters see as discrimination against the church by the Turkish authorities. This has indeed been an issue in that other thorny question raised by the pope’s visit—Turkey’s membership negotiations with the European Union.

Traditionally, the Vatican has been opposed to Turkish membership—or, at least, that has long been thought to be its position. The idea of Europe as a fundamentally Christian continent was behind the Vatican’s support for moves to have Christianity written into the EU constitution, even though the Vatican is not an EU member state—indeed, it is hard to see how such an entity could ever meet the membership criteria. Yet when the pope arrived in Turkey, Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan, who earlier had said he would not meet the pontiff in protest of the Regensburg lecture, claimed that when he did in fact meet the pope, Benedict had said he now was in favor of EU membership for Turkey.

This certainly came as a surprise to many—although it most likely served both to ease the pope’s visit and to provide a useful cover for Erdogan’s about-face, while neatly backing the Vatican into a corner. Further clarification from the Holy See, however, stated that the Vatican did not have a position on such political issues as Turkish membership, but did encourage Europe to preserve its “Christian roots” and to hold religious freedom as a key criterion for EU membership. This was widely seen as a reference to the restrictions on the Orthodox Church, but also on the activities of other churches in Turkey, which has strict laws against missionary activity—a point vexing to Protestant evangelical churches, in particular.

These comments could be seen as qualified support for Turkey’s eventual membership, however, and as such may be a message to some of the governments in Catholic Europe most opposed to Turkish membership. However, it is Orthodox Cyprus that continues to be the major bugbear of Turkish membership, with this process very much in the balance as the Washington Report went to press.

Jon Gorvett is a free-lance journalist based in Istanbul.

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