"Nihilistic Necrophilia"

Kinda has a ring to it, no? That's what Mustafa Aykol, writing in the Turkish Daily News, says bin-Ladenism is. Jim Geraghty, who lives in Ankara, is blogging the Pope's trip. I enjoyed this post too.

It is unlikely that Turkey will have a warm-and-fuzzy attitude towards Christianity in our lifetime; or at least not for a while in our lifetimes. There is, however, an attitude of staunch secularism that, if not outright tolerant, sees Islamist religious intolerance as backwards and un-Turkish. (By golly, it's not what Ataturk would do!)
(Random aside - Turks feel either the most minimal or no connection or bond at all with Arab Muslims. When the Dubai Ports World controversy was brewing, the reaction of two of my Turkish friends was, "Well, anti-Muslim bias is wrong. It's discrimination. But anti-Arab bias... man, that's just common sense! I wouldn't let one of those Arab lunatics run my country's port!")