Magister’s column also has quite a bit of perspective on the trip to Turkey. This is one of the best summations of the situation there that I’ve seen. Pass it on.

The dialogue was not a mere academic exercise. What little remained of the Eastern Roman Empire was under its final attack from the Ottoman armies. Around sixty years later, in 1453, Constantinople would fall under Muslim dominion, and the basilica of Hagia Sophia would be turned into a mosque.

So then, the next trip that Benedict XVI has planned, at the end of November, is to Istanbul, the current name for Constantinople. It includes an arrival at Ankara, the capital of Turkey, and a stop in Ephesus, at what is traditionally called the “House of Our Lady.”

It was the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, Barthlomew I, who invited the pope in mid-2005. Benedict XVI immediately accepted the invitation, without waiting for it to be confirmed by a similar invitation from the Turkish authorities. And this alone was enough to irritate the Ankara government, which does not recognize Bartholomew I’s role as a patriarch, but treats him as an ordinary citizen. In today’s Turkey, there are a few tens of thousands of Christians, mostly belonging to the Armenian Church. The faithful of the patriarchate of Constantinople are 3-4 thousand. And there are also a few thousand Catholics.

The Turkish government formally invited the pope last February. But shortly before this, on the 5th of the same month, there was the killing of an Italian priest, Fr. Andrea Santoro, in a church in Trabzon, on the Black Sea. After this, other priests were the targets of threats and attacks. For a few months, a number of the representatives of the Catholic Church in Turkey have been living under the protection of unarmed, plainclothes police officials. Their telephone conversations are monitored, and their mail is often already open when it is delivered. More than being protected, they have the feeling of being watched.

Last June, another important Church leader, the “Catholicos” of the Armenians, Karekin II, visited Turkey. A reference that he made to the massacre of Armenians carried out by the Ottoman Empire during its final phase earned him a penal trial for offenses against Turkey, brought against him by the magistrate of Istanbul.

Religious liberty is largely lacking in Turkey: this is also true for the non-Sunni Muslims, the Alevi. The president of the office that oversees Turkish Islam on behalf of the government, Ali Bardakoglu, is inflexible in rejecting the request of the Alevi to be recognized as a distinct Muslim community. Their places of worship are still downgraded as “cultural centers.”

And Ali Bardakoglu was the first among the Turkish authorities to react to the lecture by Benedict XVI in Regensburg. Here is what he said:

“His was a very provocative, hostile, and prejudicial address. I hope that it does not reflect an indwelling hostility in the pope’s interior world that reveals the presumptuous, indulgent, and arrogant attitude of those who know they have the economic power of the West behind them. If a man of religion or a scientist criticizes the history of a religion or the members of that religion, we can talk about it. But when one speaks about holy things, about the holy Book and its Prophet, it is a sign of arrogance, of hostility, and gives way to slander that incites religious fighting. The Muslim world must look with concern at Benedict XVI’s upcoming trip to Turkey. We are waiting for him to take back his words and to apologize to the world of Islam.”

If this is the welcome Benedict XVI receives from those who oversee Islam in Turkey, the prospects are not encouraging.