By PHK
The pope left Istanbul for Rome at noon on Friday.
Even if Topkapi, the opulent palace of former Ottoman Sultans that overlooks the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn and which was made famous in the west by Mozart’s early opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” and “Topkapi,” the 1964 suspense film by Jules Dassin that starred Melina Mercouri, was not on Pope Benedict’s itinerary, his four day visit to Turkey was a success.
Yes, the pope’s visit was filled to the brim with religious sites, services and spiritual symbolism. But as I indicated earlier, it seems to me it represented more than that. Not only did it initiate the healing of a nearly 1000 year old schism between Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Church, but it signaled a shift in attitude towards moderate Islam, moderate Muslims, Turks and Turkey on the part of the spiritual head of the largest single and most powerful community of Christians in Europe, indeed in 
the world.
In Turkey, Pope Benedict’s was the voice of reason: A call for conciliation and cessation of violence. This, after all, is a fundamental part of Christian doctrine. It is also a part that needs to be heard and heeded throughout the world far more than it is today. As psychologists and others have long observed, violence begets violence, and cultures of violence spiral all too easily out of control.
Whatever the pope’s precise words were to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan regarding future Turkish EU membership, the pope, to quote Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times of December 2, “let it be known that he now views Turkey’s EU candidacy ‘positively’ and called for “rapprochement and integration into Europe on the basis of common values and principles.
This is no small thing. Europe desperately needs to come to grips with its increasing Muslim minorities for at least one of the same reasons the US needs to remove head from sand with respect to illegal immigration from across our southern border. It’s foremost a practical matter. We both need the labor and everyone needs to understand that when families immigrate they often do not go home.
Turkey and Europe
What the pope did last week was to reinforce Turkey’s European connections at a time when the country’s relations with Europe have been called into question – most visibly through the latest stumbling blocks affecting Turkey’s accession talks with the European Union.
Whatever the precise language the pope used in reference to Turkey’s EU bid, it is clear that he understands that freedom for all religious minorities in Turkey is directly tied to Turkish entrance into the EU. In fact, the increased religious freedom EU membership will bring will also apply to Islam in Turkey because it too is under the tight control of the state. The government does this through the Diyanet, its Directorate of Religious Affairs. EU membership requires adherence to the principles of religious freedom as well as respect for human rights which as William Chislett and others sympathetic – and those not - to Turkey’s EU bid have pointed out are “still not the case.”
This is, however, a double-edged sword because Turkish government control has also helped kept radical Islam at bay. It was not Turks, after all, who precipitated 9/11, the London subway or the Madrid train bombings. Radical clerics do not preach in Turkey: clerics are state employees, the government writes their sermons and keeps tabs on them in other ways. Those few Turks who have become radicalized were exposed to militant Islam in mosques abroad.
The Turkish reality is not one of French laïcité or separation of religion and state, but it is also a world apart from the alliance in Saudi Arabia between the House of Saud and the fanatical Wahhabis whereby the strictures of this ultraconservative sect of Sunni Islam lie like stifling blankets over that country’s every day life.
Indeed, for Turkey – and the rest of the world - the greatest challenge may be how to retain the separation between militant Sunni Islam and Turkish Muslims - if and when state control over religion withers away.
I was amused to see footage of two women in full chador (not simply the headscarf) walk past the camera in Newhour correspondent Margaret Warner’s final report from Turkey as a part of her coverage of Turkey’s “head scarf” debate. Yes, I too saw a very few women draped from head to foot in black when I was in Turkey in September, but for the most part the division on the Istanbul street was between young women in designer headscarves - which in no way covered their faces - and those clad in western dress – often skin tight jeans.
The two groups regularly intermingled - as Warner showed in her interview with two girls at a private Istanbul religious university. In fact, if my memory serves me, I may well have seen more women in head scarves when I was in Turkey in June 1994. I also remember then seeing a few women in chador too in the Sultanahmet District near the Blue Mosque but again I think I saw fewer this past September – and I was there at the beginning of Ramadan.
My totally unscientific observations corroborate with data recently released by TEVSEV one of Turkey’s new think tanks and which Hugh Pope quoted in his November 28 WSJ Oped “The West’s Eastern Front” (subscription only.)
In a nutshell, the TEVSEV survey found that although piety was on the rise in Turkey – as elsewhere in Europe – the number of Turkish women covering their heads has declined in the past seven years. Further, only one percent now wear the chador and those few that do are almost entirely older and rural.
Perhaps more importantly, support for Sharia law has declined from 21 to 9 percent and 81 percent of the Turks condemn suicide bombing as un-Islamic regardless of location or perpetrator. What accounts for the changes? According to Hugh Pope, rising wealth, stability, increased education and urbanization – “the same factors that have slowly improved Turkey’s human rights and democratic records in recent years.”
Further, half of Turkey’s trade is with the EU and over half of its 21 million tourists come from Europe. A substantial number visit via the mammoth cruise ships that now ply the Eastern Mediterranean. Others, however, come for the long term because the Turkish sun shines just as brightly, the water is a soothing, turquoise blue and the beachfront prices are far cheaper than along the EU's own Mediterranean expanse. 
Nevertheless, I don’t expect instantaneous miracles out of this pope’s recent visit to Turkey, but I hope at the very least his words and deeds will initiate some much needed rethinking and introspection that not only pulls back the EU and Turkey from the brink but also moves the dialog forward.
Photos by PHKushlis: 1) Topkapi Palace, Sept. 29, 2006; 2) Meryemana (Mary's House), Mt. Coressos, near Ephesus, chapel, Sept. 15, 2006; 3) Cruise ship in Ephesus harbor, Sept. 14, 2006.