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| U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson |
When Andrew Brunson saw a police summons on his door in late summer 2016, the U.S. 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 Oct. 7, 2016, was detained and later charged with involvement in a coup attempt. He is still in detention and is now at the centre of a diplomatic row that has fuelled Turkeyโs most serious currency crisis for almost two decades.
โObviously he was more than surprisedโ to be detained, Brunsonโs lawyer, Ismail Cem Halavurt, told Reuters in an interview on Friday.
Brunson lived and preached in Izmir, a city on Turkeyโs Aegean coast near some of the sites of Christianityโs first communities. At his first hearing in April, attended by Reuters, Brunson said he was โraising disciples for Jesusโ 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.
U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded Brunsonโs unconditional release, describing him as a โgreat patriot hostageโ, and has slapped sanctions and tariffs on Turkey which have helped push the lira currency to record lows.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has linked Brunsonโs 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 U.S. cars, alcohol and tobacco in a tit-for-tat response.
โYou have one pastor as well. Give him (Gulen) to usโฆ Then we will try him (Brunson) and give him to you,โ 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 Brunsonโs case to international prominence and made the 50-year-old American the unlikely centre 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, Brunsonโs 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 โ standard practice with residency violations โ and to return to Turkey when his papers were sorted out.
Instead, he was held in a detention centre for two months before being formally arrested on Dec. 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 Gulenโs network, according to the indictment seen by Reuters. Both are designated terrorist groups by Ankara.
He was also charged with disclosing state information โfor political or military espionageโ.
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 centre around support for separatist Kurds and connections with alleged coup plotters.
โI came to Turkey in 1993 to tell people about Jesus,โ 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.
โIโve never done something secretive in my time in Turkey. The government monitored us all the time but Iโve never done anything against Turkey,โ he said.
The judge told Brunson he was not on trial for carrying out missionary activities but to face the charges against him.
Prosecutors questioned why he travelled hundreds of miles from his church on Turkeyโs western coast to the mainly Kurdish southeast interior, where the PKK is active.
Messages on his phones, travel details, testimony from his congregation and what the indictment refers to as three secret witnesses, codenamed โPrayerโ, โFireโ and โMeteorโ, were cited in evidence against him.
The indictment cites GPS data showing trips to Suruc, near the Syrian border, and the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, as well as a meeting in 2010 with a man described by one of the secret witnesses as a U.S. special forces soldier.
Brunson said his trips to Kurdish areas were to help refugees who had escaped war in neighbouring Syria.
โI do not accept that I acted in accordance with PKK targets โฆ We wanted to convert Syrian refugees coming to Izmir. I do not differentiate between their ethnic identities,โ he said.
โPrayerโ, the secret witness, was quoted in the indictment as saying Brunson was linked to prominent suspected members of Gulenโs network.
Halavurt said the witness had failed to offer concrete evidence of any such connections.
The prosecution said in its indictment that Brunsonโs phone records and witness testimony did establish the connections.
Turkey has detained 160,000 people since the abortive putsch, almost half of them formally charged and kept in jail during their trials.
Brunson was not in the country at the time of the coup attempt but returned soon afterwards, according to his lawyer. In a text message cited in the indictment, he said the coup attempt โwas a shockโ.
โWe were waiting for some events that would shake the Turks โ preparing the conditions for Jesusโ return โฆ I think the situation is going to get worse. Weโll win in the end,โ said the message, which was dated July 21, 2016 and addressed to a fellow pastor, according to the indictment.
Brunson did not deny sending the message but said it had been misunderstood, the indictment said.
โWE DIDNโT KNOW HIMโ
In the Alsancak district of Izmir where Brunson lived, a pharmacy owner described him and his wife as โquiet peopleโ.
The owner of a boutique two streets from his home said she never met him. โI know everyone in this neighbourhood and I had no idea these people lived here,โ she said.
Turkeyโs government says it was similarly unaware of Brunson until his case was raised by the U.S. consulate.
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said this month that the case was triggered by a criminal complaint filed by a translator who had worked for Brunson and denied that the pastor had been detained for use as a political pawn.
โWhat possible benefit could we get from this person,โ Cavusoglu said at a meeting of Turkeyโs ruling party in the southern coastal town of Alanya.
The senior Turkish official said negotiations had been held with U.S. counterparts โin different formatsโ but declined to comment further.
At a NATO summit in Brussels last month, Trump and Erdogan discussed Brunson. Trump thought he and his Turkish counterpart had agreed a deal to release the U.S. pastor, according to two U.S. sources.
Turkey has denied any such swap was agreed upon.
Erdogan had sought U.S. help to persuade Israeli authorities to release a Turkish woman being held in Israel, accused of ties to the Palestinian militant group Hamas. In exchange, Ankara would release Brunson , a senior White House official said.
Israel deported the Turkish detainee, Ebru Ozkan, on July 15 and later confirmed that Trump had requested her release. Ankara has denied ever agreeing to free Brunson in return.
Brunsonโs transfer to house arrest 10 days later was deemed too little, too late by Washington and a phone call between the two leaders on July 26 โdid not go wellโ, according to the U.S. official.
Hours later, Trump announced sanctions against two Turkish government ministers.
โThey should have given him back a long time ago, and Turkey has in my opinion acted very, very badly,โ Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday, referring to Brunson.
Brunsonโs next court hearing is scheduled for October.
