A Christian Pastor (Brunson) in Turkey's Prisons - WSJ

[TomSea]

A Christian Pastor in Turkey's Prisons
By Sohrab Ahmari
Wall Street Journal
Posted 2017-01-03 00:54 GMT

Andrew Brunson was elated when Turkey's Interior Ministry summoned him on Oct. 7 in the coastal city of Izmir. The ministry, the American pastor imagined, was granting him and his wife, Norine, permanent-resident status after they'd spent more than two decades preaching the gospel in Turkey. Instead they were arrested and detained for unspecified reasons.

So began a Turkish nightmare the couple is living to this day.

Turkish immigration authorities informed the Brunsons that they would be detained pending deportation from the country. Norine was released after two weeks, but her husband was held in the immigration-detention facility for another two months, including two days in solitary confinement. He was initially denied access to legal counsel, and two U.S. consular visits didn't take place until after he'd already spent a month in the facility.

"What's been frustrating is that no information has been given at any time," a lawyer for the Brunsons told me in a phone interview. (The lawyer requested anonymity given the sensitivity of the case.) By all accounts Pastor Brunson loves Turks and Turkey. He raised his children in the country, and the Brunsons have had "zero issues for 23 years," their lawyer says.

Yet overnight on Dec. 8 the pastor was transferred to a counterterror center, brought before a judge the next day and charged with "membership in an armed terrorist organization." To this day the limited case documentation provided to the family doesn't specify which "terror" organization the pastor supposedly joined. Court proceedings revealed, however, that the Turks may have pegged Pastor Brunson as a Gülenist.

Fethullah Gülen is a Pennsylvania-based imam whom President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses of masterminding July's failed coup. For years Mr. Gülen's followers worked hand-in-hand with Mr. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party to purge the country's secular establishment. The relationship soured in 2013, however, and a power struggle ensued between the rival Islamist camps.

Most observers in Turkey, including members of the opposition, believe Gülenists were behind the attempted putsch this summer. But "Gülen" plays the role of Goldstein in Mr. Erdogan's personal "1984"--the devious traitor who lurks behind every doner-kebob stand and behind every tragedy. Under the pretext of rooting out Gülenists, the government has jailed or fired tens of thousands of police officers, prosecutors, judges, journalists, educators and members of the armed forces.

Continued: http://www.aina.org/news/20170102195418.htm

Then there are cases like Pastor Brunson's. A court on Thursday denied his appeal against imprisonment. So far his is the most serious, but authorities have also expelled a number of evangelical missionaries in recent months and shuttered a Protestant church in Antakya for offering "unauthorized" Bible courses.

[DB]

GET OUT OF TURKEY!