Allen:

Yet in his later address to the diplomatic corps in Turkey, Benedict returned to the two themes which have formed the core of his message to Muslims: the need to reject terrorism, and the need for “reciprocity,” meaning religious freedom.

“The civil authorities of every democratic country are duty bound to guarantee the effective freedom of all believers and to permit them to organize freely the life of their religious communities,” he said. “I am certain that religious liberty is a fundamental expression of human liberty and that the active presence of religions in society is a source of progress and enrichment for all.”

It’s noteworthy that Benedict chose to raise the religious freedom issue in his meeting with ambassadors rather than at the Religious Affairs Directorate, where it might have seemed a more direct compliant about his host nation.

Turkey’s tiny Christian population (roughly 100,000 in a country of TK million) suffers under a variety of restrictions, both de jure and de facto. Perhaps most notably, the Patriarch of Constantinople has been unable to train his own clergy at the historic Halki Seminary, which has been closed by order of the Turksih government since 1971.

Benedict also issued a clear warning that religions should shun direct political power, a point with special relevance in a country that features several Islamic political parties, and insisted that religious leaders must “utterly refuse to sanction recourse to violence as a legitimate expression of religion.”

In some ways, Benedict appeared to echo some of the warnings he and his predecessor, John Paul II, have issued to former states of the Soviet sphere now making their way into the EU, namely to avoid an exaggerated secularism that would assign religion to a purely private sphere.

In the context of both European and Turkish debates over secularism, Benedict affirmed the legitimacy of church/state separation, but argued that religious believers nevertheless have a legitimate political contribution to make in defense of human dignity, especially of the most vulnerable.