AN UNWANTED VISIT?
By Semih Idiz

Anatolian Times, Turkey
Nov 23 2006

MILLIYET- It seems that Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Turkey will be
troubled, and the government is experiencing uneasy days due to this
visit. Some people say that it comes from the Justice and Development
Party’s (AKP) unhappiness with this visit. According to the latest
news, negative interpretations in the West of this situation caused
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to belatedly schedule a meeting
with him during the visit. But it’s not certain if this will happen
or not. We can see the visit is worrying the government as well. The
main reason for this is the pope’s visit to Patriarch Bartholomeos.

If the state could, it would block the visit. But it can’t. The reason
is very clear: The whole world will pay attention to this visit. Ankara
knows that such an action would damage Turkey’s international image and
so would be more serious than the drawbacks of the pope-Bartholomeos
meeting. So why is the visit being paid?

Firstly, let me remind you of something. The pope was supposed to come
to Turkey last year at Bartholomeos’ invitation for St. Andreas day,
the holiest day of the Orthodox church. As the head of the Catholic
world, his aim was to meet with ‘ecumenical’ leaders of the Greek
Orthodox world and continue the process of rapprochement between the
Eastern and Western churches.

Meanwhile, although we say the opposite, the world considers Patriarch
Bartholomeos to be the ecumenical leader of the Greek Orthodox
Church. Ankara, which was disturbed that Bartholomeos invited the
pope, sent a state invitation on behalf of Turkey to the pope. As he
wouldn’t be able to reject the state’s invitation, the pope accepted
it but postponed his meeting with Bartholomeos. In other words,
Ankara faced a visit that it never wanted. Meanwhile, new dynamics
emerged and this visit started to gain new meanings. The pope opened
his mouth and enraged the Muslim world. Erdogan himself made some
of the harshest criticisms. So the pope’s visit to Turkey took on
a meaning of ‘creating consensus between civilizations.’ However,
for that the pope shouldn’t be meeting with President Ahmet Necdet
Sezer, but Erdogan, who is considered the ‘leading Muslim politician
in Europe,’ so that it would be meaningful. If Turkey had been a
normal country, the pope would have been received at the Presidential
Palace in Cankaya, and Erdogan, the Religious Affairs Directorate
head, the Greek and Armenian patriarchs and the Jewish chief rabbi
would have been invited to the banquet given in his honor. This way
Turkey’s secular character would have been emphasized and it would
have promoted interfaith tolerance. But since this didn’t happen, now I
can only hope Ankara will come through this visit without any problems.