What has NOT been reported by MSM regarding the true nature and purpose of the Pope's visit to Turkey.
01 Dec 2006
Pope in Turkey: A Reluctant State Guest
by Srdja Trifkovic
On Friday Pope Benedict XVI arrived back in Rome following a four-day visit to Turkey. His trip marked his first papal visit to a Muslim nation, and was marked by controversy that followed remarks he made in September on the link between violence and Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. Before leaving Turkey the pope celebrated Mass for the small Roman Catholic community in Istanbul and repeated his call to heal divisions among the world’s Christians. On Wednesday pope met Patriarch Bartholomew I, widely respected as “the first among equals†among Orthodox bishops. Earlier in the week, immediately upon his arrival in Turkey, the pontiff surprised the world by telling the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that the Holy See supports his country’s entry to the European Union. He also called for increased dialogue, peace and reconciliation between Christians and Muslims, and—according to Mr. Erdogan—“the most important message the Pope gave was toward Islam, he reiterated his view of Islam as peaceful and affectionate.â€
To consider the significance of these events we bring you a transcript of Srdja Trifkovic’s interview on Pope Benedict’s visit broadcast on Issues, Etc., presented by Todd Wilken on KFUO (St. Louis, MO). The Rev. Wilken is an ordained minister in theLutheran Church-Missouri Synod. His first question to Dr. Trifkovic—a regular guest on his program—was if Benedict’s statements have changed the atmosphere in his official talks with Turkish leaders.
TRIFKOVIC: First of all let’s be clear on one point: it was the Turkish government that dictated the framework and the official status of his visit. The pope’s original intention was to pay a strictly pastoral visit to Patriarch Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch. It was NOT his intention to have a state visit to Turkey, and certainly it had not been his intention to visit Ankara at all. Your listeners need to know that the Turks, even though nominally secular, are treating the Orthodox Patriarch as an obedient subject of theirs—and he did not have any say in this matter. What the Turks have done is the equivalent of the Italian Republic telling the leader of the Anglican Church that he cannot come to the Vatican and visit the pope, unless he agrees that his visit is to be a fully-blown state visit to Italy that would include formal visits with the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, and the laying of a wreath at the tomb of king Victor Emmanuel.
WILKEN: What you are saying is that we have a big story here: the political leaders of Turkey are dictating the terms of pope’s visit, of why he’s visiting and what he’s going to do?
TRIFKOVIC: Absolutely, and this is something too delicate for the pope to hint at, for him or the Vatican bureaucracy. This is something well known and quite obvious to the curious, and yet it seems to elude the attention of countless commentators, scribes and talking heads. Turkey, a nominally secular country, is abusing its position of physical control over the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, and using it as a means of forcing the pope to convert a visit originally intended to be pastoral into a state occasion. Furthermore, regarding his latest statements on Islam’s “peacefulness†and his support for Turkey in the European Union, there was a pound of flesh to be extracted on the account of his Regensburg address and his earlier statements that clearly indicated his opposition to Turkey joining the EU. On both those topics I do not believe that the Pope was being completely sincere in his latest statements, but he is between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, had he cancelled the visit, that would have aggravated the position of the remaining few Christians in Turkey, who are already under immense pressure. On the other hand, once he decided to go ahead with the visit, he knew he’d have to make all of the politically correct statements that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and others were expecting. Personally I think it was rather unfortunate that the pope opted for the second course. I do not think that Turkey belongs in the European Union. If one were to be cynical one could say that the only reason why Turkey should join the EU is to bring about a speedy end of that odious institution, because it would be subjected to all kinds of internal pressures that could no longer be accommodated. Nevertheless, the Pope’s statement about the “peaceful†and “loving†nature of Islam is not only at odds with his Regensburg address—where he was only quoting Emperor Manuel, rather than venting his own views—but it is quite clear that his words in Ankara were spoken under duress.
WILKEN: You have mentioned several times that Turkey is “ostensibly†a secular state, so do you see Turkey moving towards political Islam, towards officially becoming an Islamic state any time in the near future?
TRIFKOVIC: If you remember the shah, he seemed fairly solid and inviolable in his position of near-absolute power in Iran throughout the 1970s, and it was only in the last year of his rule that things rapidly started going downwards. I believe that Iran in 1975 or 1976 corresponds to where Turkey is today: three or four years away from an Islamic wave that is already sweeping the country but is not yet apparent at the top of the political pyramid. Turkey’s elite class is rather narrow, it invludes many Western-educated people with highly developed sensibility, notably the Nobel Prize winner for literature Orhan Pamuk, people willing and able to act as a bridge between two cultures and two continents. But by and large Turkey is an overwhelmingly Muslim society. The feelings of the Turks are well manifested in the fact that they’ve elected Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his party that is now termed “post-Islamistâ€â€”but he hasn’t given up on any of the tenets of his political creed. What is particularly worrying is that the junior officer ranks of the Turkish army are being affected by the Islamist tendencies. And yet the Army is widely regarded as the only real bulwark, the defender of the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the reformer who, back in the 1920s, turned the derelict Ottoman Empire into Turkey, a secular nation-state.
WILKEN: Turkey is constantly referred to as the friendliest Muslim nation we have, that is, the one nation with predominantly Islamic population that is a friend of the West. Is that a deserved reputation?
TRIFKOVIC: Not at all. If you look at the actual sentiments of ordinary Turks, they are well reflected in the most popular movie ever made in Turkey—it is called “Valley of the Wolves, Iraq.†It offers a largely fictitious account of a firefight between a Turkish contingent of peacekeepers and an American Marine unit. It is very loosely based on fact—there had been a skirmish resulting from a case of mistaken identity—but it is a film in which evil Americans deliberately shoot civilian guests at a wedding party, including a little boy, and they kidnap Iraqis in order to remove their body organs and sell them on the black market in New York, and—significantly—Tel Aviv. Turkey is also a country where a Westerner may feel relatively safe and relatively comfortable in Istanbul or in a resort along the Aegean Coast (when the Kurds are not blowing themselves up during the tourist season, that is). If you go into the heartland of Anatolia, however, and if you go to the eastern part of Turkey, you’ll find that U.S. personnel at Incirlik Air Force Base have to travel in convoys and carry small arms with them at all times. It is no longer safe for them to go around on their own. Let’s also remember that Turkey has regional ambitions that far exceed the appetites of a regular secular, democratic country. In the Aegean Turkey has constant territorial disputes with the Greeks, and in 1974 it militarily occupied the northern two-thirds of Cyprus—an independent and sovereign country—in an act of blatant military aggression for which it had never been reprimanded, let alone punished, either by NATO or by Washington. Turkey has further geopolitical designs in the former Soviet Central Asia, most of which is ethnically or linguistically related to the Turks. What we are witnessing is a regional power of the first order in the making that has every reason to mimic the language of modern secularism in its PR, but which, in essence, remains culturally, spiritually and politically, not to mention ethnically, vastly different from the rest of Europe—not only vastly different, but also potentially inimical to Europe.
WILKEN: Are you comforted at all that, at least in its outward form, Turkey nevertheless remains a democracy?
TRIFKOVIC: Turkey “remains†a democracy in the sense in which Iraq is “turning into†a democracy: a budding Islamic theocracy in which the institutions of political Islam are being re-legitimized by the will of the majority. In Turkey, under the democratic veneer we are witnessing the erosion of Kemalist institutions, and the gradual return of the Islamic mindset that once dominated the Ottoman domain. It is very much in line with the overall phenomenon of what is known as “democracy in the Greater Middle East.†We’ve witnessed it in Algeria, where the Army had to intervene in 1994 to prevent the Islamists from coming to power, and in the Palestinian Authority last January, where Hamas was victorious in a general election. It was exactly a year ago that President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt allowed the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikwanis, to contest elections, and in every constituency where they were allowed to field candidates, they swept the board. So yes, Turkey is very much a “democracyâ€â€”in the spirit of the Islamic Greater Middle East.
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Originally Posted by Sean Osborne
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