Is he a spy working to overthrow the government of Turkey or is he a Christian devoted to teaching about Jesus Christ in the land he loves? Given the evidence to date, the likely scenario is that he is a devout Christian that unfortunately found himself a convenient pawn in a high-stakes game of political and economic chess.
Andrew Brunson, 50, is an evangelical Presbyterian pastor who worked in Izmir on Turkey’s Aegean coast, where he was a pastor at the Izmir Resurrection Church.
He has lived in Turkey for more than 23 years with his wife and three children, according to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), an organization led by attorney Jay Sekulow that has advocated for his release.
But in October 2016, several months after a failed coup attempt in Turkey, Brunson was arrested and accused of plotting to overthrow the Turkish government.1
Brunson is originally from Black Mountain, North Carolina. He is married and has three children. Brunson, who was applying for Turkish permanent residency, was imprisoned on October 7, 2016, as part of the purges that followed the failed 2016 coup attempt. His wife, Norine, was initially arrested alongside him but was released after 13 days. Norine later briefly met American Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in March 2017. Brunson was moved to house arrest on July 25, 2018.
At the US State Department’s Ministerial to Advance Religious freedom, on July 26, 2018, US Vice President Pence called on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to release Brunson or face significant sanctions, saying “If Turkey does not take immediate action to free this innocent man of faith and send him home to America, the United States will impose significant sanctions on Turkey until [Brunson] is free.”2
On the same day, President Trump released a tweet, stating that the United States would impose sanctions on Turkey due to Brunson’s detention. According to the Independent, Turkey moving Brunson to house arrest on July 25 was seen as “too little, too late” by American authorities and a phone call between the two countries on the 26th was described as “not going well”. It associates the July 25 swap with the release of a Turkish citizen by Israel on the 15th, as it is claimed that there was an offer for a swap between the two.
On August 1, 2018, the U.S. Department of Treasury imposed sanctions on two top Turkish government officials who were involved in the detention of Brunson, Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu. Daniel Glaser, the former Treasury official under President Barack Obama, said: “It’s certainly the first time I can think of” the U.S. sanctioning a NATO ally. “I certainly regard it as a human rights violation to unlawfully detain somebody, so I think it falls within the scope of the Global Magnitsky Act.”3
Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said, “This spring, days before the start of Pastor Brunson’s trial, I traveled to Izmir, Turkey to meet with Pastor Brunson at the prison where he was being held. It was immediately evident that Brunson was not in good health. Although he has been strengthened by his love for his family and faith in God, he has lost 50 pounds in prison and spends 24 hours a day in a cell with limited human contact. At one point, Brunson was held with 21 people in a prison cell designed for only eight people.
During our meeting, Pastor Brunson told me that his worst fear was that the American government would accept the charges against him and simply forget about him. I told him that I and my fellow members of Congress would never allow that to happen.”
Senator Tillis continues, “Weeks later, I returned to Turkey, this time to attend Brunson’s first trial hearing. The 12 hour-long hearing, translated into English by an interpreter, confirmed my worst suspicions. The charges against Brunson are completely bogus, a nonsensical collection of outrageous conspiracy theories and ridiculous allegations made by anonymous witnesses. The trial itself is a kangaroo court, led by a three-judge panel that presumes Brunson is guilty and forces him to defend himself without interacting with his lawyer.”4
In a land run by a government that, out of desperation, is willing to sacrifice the personal freedoms of the individual to attain their political objectives, life can be very dangerous. Let those of us that live in free societies, where the individual freedoms of the citizens can not so easily be dismissed by the more powerful, thank God and work tirelessly to preserve those freedoms.
