GIVE US THE HOLY WISDOM OF FORGETTING
By Lubomyr Luciuk
Winnipeg Sun (Manitoba), Canada
December 10, 2006 Sunday
FINAL EDITION
As I looked on, he asked them: "Should your country join Europe?"
They all replied, emphatically, "Yes!"
I was not surprised. These young women and men, at Istanbul’s Bogazici
University, were some of the best students I have taught, and I have
been a professor for 20 years. Most were native-born Turks and almost
all were Muslims, but they think themselves modern and secular and,
as such, European. Certainly, they were pleased to hear me making
positive reference to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the Republic
of Turkey, in 1923. Its proposed entry into the European Union was
our subject. They were all in favour.
Yet, I wondered, how widespread was their enthusiasm? I placed my
colleague’s question before men I first met in 1979, in Istanbul’s
Kapali Carsi, the Grand Bazaar. For years I have nurtured those
contacts, to the extent that Hasan and Metin and Ufuk have become
as old friends. So, over a fine fish supper on the shores of the
Bosporus, below the bridge cementing Asia to Europe, I asked —
"Should Turkey strive to enter Europe?"
These Turks are as hospitable as I have always found true followers
of Islam to be. Middle-aged, successful, and well travelled, they also
enjoy courageous conversation. Aware of the historic hostility toward
"the Turk in Europe," they voiced grudges of their own. One reminded
me that Turks were welcome when NATO needed their infantry divisions
to shore up its southern flank and when Turkish guest workers took
jobs most Europeans refused. Yet, as soon as Turkey expressed a desire
to join Europe, they were found wanting.
PEFIDIOUSNESS
Another grumbled over how Europeans pontificate about the Ottoman’s
wartime mistreatment of the Armenians, yet conveniently forget that
most of the Middle East’s problems were spawned by the perfidiousness
of England and France, dismembering "the sick man of Europe" after
the Great War, then betraying the very same Arabs they had goaded
into revolt. And who, they asked, injected Israel into their midst,
a state with weapons of mass destruction and, apparently, carte blanche
to do whatever it wants with Palestine’s indigenes, an enduring source
of geopolitical instability? Shocking perspectives for western ears,
perhaps, yet a shared text amongst students and shopkeepers alike.
My friends came to a rough consensus. If joining Europe meant being
told how they should live, or what they should believe, or atone for,
they aren’t much interested. And, as one of them pointed out, they
can visit Europe any time they want. No need to join.
So I asked my students the question again, changing it a little. If
Europeans require their society to make concessions to prove how truly
democratic and inclusive they are, would they agree? Could they, for
example, accept the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople recovering
one of Istanbul’s greatest sites, the Hagia Sophia? Once mother church
of all Eastern Christians of the Byzantine liturgical tradition, both
Orthodox and Greek Catholic, it became a mosque after the city fell
to Mehmet the Conqueror, in 1453. Since 1935, at Ataturk’s command,
it has been a museum. Why not return the Church of the Holy Wisdom
to its original owners, a gesture of reconciliation?
After all, anyone can visit Notre-Dame in Paris, or St. Stephen’s in
Vienna, or St. Peter’s in Rome, be they Hindu or Catholic, Muslim or
Jew. Those who wish to pray, can. Those who do not suffer no shaming.
The only condition upon admission is the same for all,
mutual respect. Yet, at designated times, each of these great
cathedral-museums becomes a place of Christian worship. Why not the
Hagia Sophia?
Some were puzzled that a Canadian professor, presumably a secularist,
would propose making a museum into a re-consecrated church. Others
were angry at the very thought. Why not just leave well enough alone?
Among these bright young Turks, I realized, there would be more than
a little dissent if Europe’s entry fee becomes too dear.
Not surprisingly, the recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Turkey
was protested. He deflected much of that resentment, adroitly, by
paying respects at Ataturk’s tomb, later joining the Grand Mufti of
Istanbul for silent prayer inside the Blue Mosque. The Pope also met
with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the honorary leader of the
world’s 300 million Orthodox, a step toward a restoration of full
communion between Catholic and Orthodox worlds separated since the
Great Schism of 1054. And His Holiness went, briefly, into the very
church my students and I discussed, the Hagia Sophia. While there I
hope he beseeched our Lord above to bestow upon us all — Catholic,
Orthodox and Muslim believers alike — the holy wisdom of forgetting.
For dwelling too much on the past may not be wise, for any of us.