Daily Times

When Andrew Brunson saw a police summons on his door in late summer 2016, the US evangelical pastor thought it was a routine appointment to sort out his residency papers in Turkey, his home for nearly a quarter of a century.

He went to the police station on October 7, 2016, was detained and later charged with involvement in a coup attempt. He is still in detention and is now at the center of a diplomatic row that has fueled Turkey’s most serious currency crisis for almost two decades.

“Obviously he was more than surprised” to be detained, Brunson’s lawyer, Ismail Cem Halavurt, told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

Brunson lived and preached in Izmir, a city on Turkey’s Aegean coast near some of the sites of Christianity’s first communities. At his first hearing in April, attended by Reuters, Brunson said he was “raising disciples for Jesus” in a country he deeply loved.

In July, after nearly two years in prison, Brunson was moved to house arrest. A court on Friday rejected an appeal to release him, saying evidence was still being collected and he posed a flight risk, according to a copy of the ruling seen by Reuters.

US President Donald Trump has demanded Brunson’s unconditional release, describing him as a “great patriot hostage”, and has slapped sanctions and tariffs on Turkey which have helped push the lira currency to record lows. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has linked Brunson’s release to the fate of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish Muslim cleric living in the United States whom he blames for the July 2016 coup attempt. Erdogan has raised tariffs on US cars, alcohol and tobacco in a tit-for-tat response.

“You have one pastor as well. Give him [Gulen] to us…Then we will try him [Brunson] and give him to you,” Erdogan said in a speech last September to police officers in Ankara. It is a suggestion Washington has dismissed.

The breakdown in relations between the two NATO allies has thrust Brunson’s case to international prominence and made the 50-year-old American the unlikely center of attention in a currency crisis that has shaken global emerging markets.

Turkish courts have rejected several appeals for Brunson to be freed and allowed to leave Turkey. A senior Turkish official, asked about the case, said that the judiciary is independent and the verdict is up to the courts.

Halavurt, Brunson’s lawyer, said the North Carolina pastor was not unduly alarmed when he first went to the police station. He expected at worst to be given a two-week deadline to leave the country– standard practice with residency violations–and to return to Turkey when his papers were sorted out. Instead, he was held in a detention center for two months before being formally arrested on December 9, 2016.

He was charged with crimes committed on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state, and on behalf of Gulen’s network, according to the indictment seen by Reuters. Both are designated militant groups by Ankara.

He was also charged with disclosing state information “for political or military espionage”. Brunson has denied all the charges against him.

Secret witnesses

His indictment, interviews with his lawyer, and three trial sessions attended by Reuters show the accusations against Brunson center around support for separatist Kurds and connections with alleged coup plotters.

“I came to Turkey in 1993 to tell people about Jesus,” he told the judge at his first hearing in April. Dressed in a black suit and white shirt, he spoke in fluent Turkish, ignoring the two court translators. “I’ve never done something secretive in my time in Turkey. The government monitored us all the time but I’ve never done anything against Turkey,” he said.

Published in Daily Times, August 20^th 2018.