In a surprise gesture of goodwill, Pope Benedict XVI said this week that Turkey should be granted entry to the European Union. Speaking during a state visit with Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Benedict reversed his position of two years ago when, as a cardinal, he said that as a historically Muslim nation, Turkey had always stood "in permanent contrast to Europe."
Relations between the Vatican and Muslims were strained further when Benedict, in September, quoted a 14th-century characterization of Islam as an "evil and inhuman" faith with a natural tendency to violence. Those remarks set off riots throughout the Muslim world, and the pope eventually apologized. The purpose of his visit to Turkey, Benedict said, was further "reconciliation." At the same time, Benedict called upon all religious leaders "to utterly refuse to sanction recourse to violence as a legitimate expression of faith."
It's never too late to learn some tact, said The New York Times in an editorial. The Benedict we're seeing in Turkey is a great improvement over the "tone-deaf" pontiff who needlessly unleashed Muslim wrath in September. With luck, his conciliatory gestures in Turkey will soothe tempers across the Muslim world. Then he can focus on his real goal: advancing the idea that "Christian minorities in Muslim countries should be as free to practice their faith as Muslims are in the West."
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Don't hold your breath, said Tony Blankley in The Washington Times. Even as the pope was visiting, two Turkish Christians were put on trial for "insulting Turkishness" and "inciting hatred against Islam." There is something "courageous but forlorn" in the pope's thinking he can undo such ingrained prejudices with a friendly visit. Sadly, "the time is past (if it ever existed) when mere benign expressions of convivial tolerance" can heal the deepening estrangement between Islam and the West.
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