Pope: Turkey trip: Benedict XVI prepares to visit the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch, the Greek Orthdox 'first among equals'

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A very knowledgeable and uptodate article comes from Turkey, an Associated Press dispatch, via All News Radio (680 Toronto). The author is Susan Fraser, "Pope's visit offers Turkey's Christians hope for improved religious rights," (Nov24,2k6). The visit occurs as the European Union sifts thru the Turkish legal system in all aspects, pinpointing areas of unacceptable statehood and doubtfully qualified for membership.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - A Christian place of worship stands next to a false limb shop, on the ground floor of a dreary, four-storey apartment block in a run-down area of the capital. Kitchen chairs act as pews along the makeshift nave, and iron bars line the windows.

The 100-member Protestant congregation of the Ankara Kurtulus Church uses the rented space in the residential building because authorities have not responded to their request for land and a permit to build a proper church.

When Roman Catholic Pope Benedict visits mostly Muslim Turkey next week, he'll try to ease anger over his recent remarks linking Islam and violence. But he is also expected to press Turkey, which hopes to join the European Union, for improved rights for its tiny Christian community. That minority, at times forced to worship in so-called "apartment churches," has faced prejudice, discrimination and even assault.

"The Pope will discuss the rights of the religious minority" with Turkish officials, said Msgr. Luigi Padovese, the Pope's vicar in Anatolia. "In a secular country, people must have the right to believe in whatever faith they choose to believe."

The pastor of Ankara's Kurtulus Church, Rev. Ihsan Ozbek, said the Pope's visit offers hope for all Christians.

"It is a good opportunity to establish dialogue," Ozbek said. "We face serious problems. Turkish citizens who converted to Christianity, especially, face serious discrimination and violence."

Some 99 per cent of Turkey's 70 million people are Muslim. Turkey also has some 20,000 Roman Catholics, 65,000 Armenian Orthodox Christians, around 2,000 Greek Orthodox Christians, an estimated 3,500 Protestants - mostly converts from Islam - and 23,000 Jews.

Ironically, the Christian church has deep roots in what is today Turkey, a land that has also been the stage of Christian and Muslim confrontations, most notably during the Crusades.

The region hosted some of the most important Christian events, including the first Council of Nicea - in present-day Iznik - in AD 325, which established a Christian doctrine.

All seven major churches of early Christianity, mentioned in The New Testament, are in present-day Turkey. The Pope will make a pilgrimage to one of them at Ephesus.

Europe/MidEast > Turkey

St. John the Apostle is said to have brought the Virgin Mary to Ephesus, where she is believed to have spent the final years of her life, while St. Paul travelled through much of modern-day Turkey on his missionary journeys.

Constantinople - modern-day Istanbul - was the former Christian Byzantine capital for more than 1,000 years until 1453, when it fell to Muslim forces and became the seat of the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

Today, the city remains the centre of Orthodoxy, with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, considered "the first among equals" among the Orthodox leadership. Membership is dwindling.

The future of the Orthodox Church, however, is also threatened by the closure by Turkish authorities in 1971 of Halki seminary on an island off Istanbul, which trained generations of Greek Orthodox patriarchs. Turkish law requires that the patriarch be a Turkish citizen trained in Turkey. With Halki closed, a successor to Bartholomew may be hard to find.

The Armenian Orthodox community, whose seminary is also closed, faces the same challenge.

Both Greek and Armenian communities are struggling to recover property that was nationalized and confiscated in the 1970s.

Versions of Islam

Under EU pressure, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted government has taken some steps toward improving the rights of religious minorities, changing laws to allow them to re-appropriate some lost property. The government has also indicated willingness to reopen the minority seminaries, but has failed to find a formula that conforms with the country's secular laws.

Even though Turkey is secular and Turks are considered moderately religious, conversion to Christianity is widely viewed as treacherous. Authorities often report students who attend Christian meetings to their families to prevent possible conversions. Some media portray converts and Christian clergy as missionaries or spies for western powers. Proselytizers are detained and extradited.

The mistrust is so deep that non-Muslims are barred from joining the police force or the military.

In February, a Turkish teenager shot dead a Roman Catholic priest, Rev. Andrea Santoro, as he knelt in prayer in his church in the Black Sea port of Trabzon, in an attack believed to be linked to widespread anger in the Islamic world over the publication in European newspapers of caricatures of Prophet Muhammad. Two other Catholic priests were attacked this year.

Nationalists have disrupted some church services. The Ankara Kurtulus Church, linked to the U.S.-based International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, has had its windows smashed twice by suspected nationalists. No one was injured.

Turkey, no matter what comes of its project of EU membership, must come to terms with its own ingenuous claim to be a "secular society" (and thus only the state-sponsored version of a civically-moderate Islam could be allowed to flourish). In other words, to prevent an Islam of several competitive streams--but together a vast majority in the society--to prevent this hag-ridden civic Islam from shattering, to stop absolutist contrary Muslim denominations from tearing the nation (and country) apart, the seemingly-trivial Christian minority composed of its own different denominations, this minority cannot be allowed to educate its own faith-leadership. The Jewish minority is composed of only 28,000.

Turkey must find a creative solution to the problem of certain fractious Muslim denominations or trends in non-mosque social formations, while at the same time easing up on the tiny Christian and Jewish communities.

-- Owlb

More Info:

In Turkey there'll be bi warn wekcin for Pope
Istanbul police to endure Pope's safety [AP via WaPo, Nov23,2k6)