Pope Leo's Two-State Solution

 

"Türkiye has a number of, if you will, qualities about it; it is a country with the vast majority being Muslims, and yet the presence of numerous Christian communities there, although a very small minority, and yet people of different religions are able to live in peace. And that is one example, I would say, of what I think we all would be looking for throughout the world."

"To say that in spite of religious differences, in spite of ethnic differences, in spite of many other differences, people can indeed live in peace. Türkiye itself has had, of course, in its history various moments when it was not always the case, and yet to have experienced that and to have been able to speak also with President Erdogan about peace, I think, was an important element, a worthwhile element of my visit."

Pope Leo XIV

Pope Leo (C) was welcomed to Ankara by Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan   Anadolu via Getty Images

"Christians in Türkiye face everyday discrimination for their faith. Foreign Christians with Turkish spouses and children have been banned from entering or re-entering the country. Religion is recorded on the Turkish ID card, making it easy to discriminate against Christian job applicants. Even Greek and Armenian Christians who attend traditional churches aren't considered full members of Turkish society. Their churches struggle with legal obstacles and red tape intended to obstruct the practice of their faith."

"Historical Christian groups, such as the Armenian and Assyrian (Syriac) churches, face high pressure and hostility in the southeastern region of Türkiye. For decades, they have been caught between the rivalries of the Turkish army and Kurdish resistance groups. Most Christians from those churches no longer live in their ancestral regions but have moved to western areas of Türkiye."

Open Doors International 

"Ramazan Arkan, the pastor of the Antalya Evangelical Churches in Turkey, spoke during the meeting.

“Turkish churches face many difficulties and much discrimination, and unfortunately, when we have tried to address those issues with the Turkish authorities, we have most often been ignored because Christians are the religious minority in Turkey,” he said."

"Missionaries are also being deported. Their residence permits are not being renewed, and they are labeled as possible security threats. Fearing they could be deported at any time, many foreign missionaries in Turkey avoid participating in church meetings or activities to go undetected."

"Members of the Christian community are not free from hate crimes, either. Many of them face threats and social isolation online."

"We encounter speech filled with insults and profanity directed at official church social media accounts, church leaders, Christianity, Christian values, and Christians in general,” the Turkish Association of Protestant Churches stated in its latest Human Rights Report."

Persecution.Org. International Christian Concern 

“We will not allow you to brainwash our Muslim youth!” the man shouted from his car. “Oh, infidels, you will be defeated and swept up into hell!”  Persecution.Org

 

Pope Leo  travelled to Turkey to attend the historic Nicaea gathering dating from the Christian gathering at the Turkish city of Nicaea in A.D.325 of bishops from the Eastern and Western churches in unity with one another; Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant; where the Nicaean Creed originated. While he was in Turkey he met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, where discussions took place related to the conflict in Gaza. Pope Leo asked Mr. Erdogan to work toward bringing peace to Gaza.

 

Just as Pope Leo has exonerated Turkey from persecution of Christians in Turkey -- where significantly, ancient Constantinople was the eastern seat of Christianity under Emperor Constantine whose mother Helena, an early convert to Christianity, persuaded her son to support Christianity. Constantinople's  transition to Istanbul, Turkey's largest city and its cultural capital took place in 1080 when Seljuk Turks invaded, installing Islam and wrenching the country from Christianity -- so too does he overlook the very fact that it is Erdogan himself that supports Gaza's terror against Israel. 

 

He cannot be unaware that President Erdogan's Sunni Islamist ideology is one of conquest achieved by violent force. Nor can he be ignorant of the fact that Erdogan has given haven to Hamas leaders, and along with Qatar, arms and supports Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups on a cohort with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Yet this pope has chosen to foster amicable relations with a dictator who persecutes his own country's Christians and actively engages in the jihadist Islamofascist plot to destroy Israel.

 

Catholics, in their faith creed universally recite "I believe in one God, the Father almighty...", yet give no mind to the fact that their monotheistic religion owes its existence to Judaism. In humble deference to the source of their one-God creed it might behoove the Catholic Church to recognize its indebtedness to the Judaic YHWH, the source of all they hold dear in their faith. That it was a Jewish man whose Judaic prescriptions they revere, and that the welfare of that crux of civilization would be of concern to Catholics and to the Pope.

 

Pope Francis stops to pray in front of a Nativity scene from Bethlehem in the Vatican audience hall Dec. 7, 2024. The baby Jesus is lying on a white and black kaffiyeh, a Palestinian headdress. Around the star, written in Arabic and Latin, are the words of the angels: "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to people of good will." (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

 

Instead, Israel, the home of the Jewish world, is held by this Pope, as it has been by his predecessors as a condemned entity, itself persecuted throughout the ages by the Catholic Church itself, a tradition that continues, now honouring a narrative of victimhood of those calling themselves Palestinians, oppressed by an 'occupying force' engaged in the commission of genocide. Pope Francis's honouring of a 'Palestinian' Jesus before his death spoke volumes of a willing abandonment of the source of Christianity, preferring to honour an Arab pretender to a Jewish originator of the religion 1.4 billion people worship globally.

 

Insisting that a two-state solution is an absolute necessity to see an end to the 80-year old conflict between the Jewish world and that of Islam that focuses on a 'Palestinian State' when since 1947 onward that Palestinian State has been rebuffed time and again in favour of castigating and casting out a Jewish presence on land 'consecrated to Islam', yet representing Judaic ancestral land, only a small portion of which is occupied by the State of Israel, a mere sliver in the total geography of the Middle East, as an intolerable affront which must be destroyed. 

 

A two-state solution, a concept originally accepted by Israel, and offered time and again in negotiations which Palestinian leadership turned away time and again, is a purely Western-supported ideal, one which Palestinians have no interest in whatever, holding out for Israel's destruction, and a one-state Palestinian solution. Israel has surrendered its support of that elusive two-state 'solution' to achieve a longed-for peace, when its people will no longer be targets for murder by its neighbours, solidified into a stone etching reflective of the  tablets of the Ten Commandments' 'thou shalt not kill', when to protect its own it must do just that. 

The Pope met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Presidential Palace in Ankara on Thursday Reuters