In a private meeting in the papal palace at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI told President Bush that he was concerned Christians in Iraq were being “mistreated by the Muslim majority.”The New York Times reports that after the meeting, the president told reporters:

“He did express deep concerns about the Christians inside Iraq, that he was concerned that the society that was evolving would not tolerate the Christian religion. And I assured him we’re working hard to make sure that people lived up to the Constitution, the modern Constitution voted on by the people that would honor people from different walks of life and different attitudes.”

According to The Washington Post, Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who also met Bush, “expressed special concern about Iraqi Catholics, whose population in the country has dwindled since the invasion.”

This is not the first time the pontiff has raised the issue of the safety of Christians in predominantly Muslim countries.In his November 2006 trip to Turkey, Pope Benedict XVI insisted that Turkey more vigorously safeguard religious freedoms and minority rights of its miniscule Christian population (0.2 percent), and issued a joint declaration with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, stating that respect for religious freedom must be a criterion for Turkey’s membership in the EU.

The Holy Father had the conviction and the courage to make these statements on Turkish soil, in the wake of calls for his arrest by Turkey’s Directorate General for Religious Affairs, massive demonstrations protesting his visit and death threats against him that preceded his visit.

But the pope’s concern over the safety of Christians in Turkey may be exaggerated, or even misplaced, argues Bush 43 speechwriter and WaPo columnist Michael Gerson in a column last week: 

The shining achievement of modern Turkey is declared by the darkness around it. In Saudi Arabia or northern Sudan, conversion from Islam is considered apostasy, a crime punishable by death. … In Turkey, a legal change of religion on your identity card merely requires a notarized letter, and several hundred Christian converts have made the switch.

And then Gerson undercuts his own assertions of religious tolerance in Turkey by detailing how nationalists incite violence with “conspiracy theories” about Christian missionaries bribing Muslims into converting” and noting that the “rise of a more publicly assertive Islam in Turkey” will only worsen the situation of Christians – and Christian converts - in Turkey:

The secular establishment, fearful of accumulated sectarian power, has traditionally denied minority religious groups the right to own property, to provide religious education beyond high school or to train their own clergy. As a result, the Armenian and Greek Orthodox churches are slowly being asphyxiated for lack of priests - and the government has sometimes hastened the process by expropriating church property without compensation. …

[R]ising Islamist influence has caused sudden storms of violence. Seven weeks ago, two Turkish Christian converts and a German citizen were ritually murdered in the southern city of Malatya by killers spouting nationalist and Islamist slogans. Pastors around the country have begun hiring professional security. The Armenian patriarch is followed by a bodyguard even during his procession to the altar — an unsettling liturgy of fear. …

Nice euphemism, “ritually murdered.” Their hands and feet were bound and their throats were slit. And there are rumors floating around the Christian community that they had also been stabbed numerous times, disemboweled and castrated.

Why should nationalists and Islamists be incensed enough to “ritually murder” these converts? As Gerson notes, Turks refer to converts to Christianity as “’foreigners’ who have repudiated Turkishness itself.” And while a notarized letter is all it takes to change one’s religion, getting that letter is tantamount to a signed confession to “insulting Turkishness” or “insulting Islam,” which are criminal acts punishable by imprisonment.

One of the Malatya victims, Necati Aydin, 26, had previously been charged with insulting Islam and was imprisoned for one month after he was caught distributing bibles in Izmir. And in the days before the papal visit to Turkey, two Christian converts, Hakan Tastan, 37, and Turan Topal, 46, were put on trial on charges of insulting Turkishness, inciting religious hatred against Islam and trying to convert other Turks to Christianity.

Quoting Ali Bardakoglu, who heads the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate, on whether missionary work was a danger to Turkey - “No, it is their natural right. We must learn to respect even the personal choice of an atheist, let alone other religions.” - Gerson ends his exercise in seeing only what he wants to see with the extraordinary statement, “That kind of clarity from a Muslim leader is the reason that Turkey, if it did not exist, would need to be invented.”

After the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917, the 60,000 remaining Armenians in “secular” Turkey who are forced to hide their identities as Armenians and Christians (video link), no doubt think this invention needs to go back to the drawing board.

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