Thank God Oriana Fallaci is dead

If she hadn't passed away earlier, Benedict's capitulation on Turkey's EU bid would have killed her. Well, the Vatican is saying that it's not that big a deal, Benedict's saying that he now encourages Turkey's bid to join the EU, when in the past he had been against it. That means that the Pope is now pretty much on the same page as Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew on that question. Bartholomew wants it because he believes that it will result in more religious freedom for the few remaining Christians in Turkey. The price of this, though, would be opening up the entire European continent to unrestricted immigration from a strongly Islamic nation of 70 million -- and this would risk annihilating European culture. If the Turks were having to consider a massive influx of European Christians, of which there are fewer and fewer each day, into their country, they'd be quite right to be concerned about how their Islamic culture and society would be permanently altered. But everybody knows that virtually no French, Germans, Italians and Spaniards will be migrating to Ankara; the movement will be entirely westward.

In 2004, when he was still a cardinal, Benedict said publicly that historically and culturally, Turkey has always been distinct from Europe. What he might have said too was that in fact the Turks have for centuries been the sworn enemy of Europe. Now, no one should want enmity to continue, but seeking peaceful coexistence in no way requires political union. Why Turkey (and more broadly, Islamic civilization) has been the enemy of Christendom have to do with geopolitics, yes, but also with very different and incompatible cultural values. Benedict is now saying that if Turkey meets EU requirements on free speech and freedom of religion, then its entry into the EU would be fine. But the state changing its laws does not change what's in the hearts of its people. What happened to the Ratzinger who once understood that, and understood that European Christian culture, or what's left of it, would be permanently altered, and maybe even eliminated, by the Islamic flood from Turkey? And for that matter, why on earth does the Orthodox Patriarch believe gaining more legal liberty for the few Orthodox remaining in the former Constantinople is worth Europe's opening the gates to massive legal Muslim immigration -- especially with Western Europe so spiritually and culturally weak, and failing to reproduce itself?

What am I missing here?