Andrew Brunson, an American pastor of a small Protestant church in Turkey, told a court in April and May he denies any wrong doing as he stands accused of supporting the attempted 2016 coup of the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
If convicted, the 50-year-old Brunson faces 35 years in prison. The case was adjourned until 18 July and Brunson was sent back to the prison where he was first sent. Although only spending ten days there in May, it was in solitary confinement and is a facility where nearly two dozen inmates are held in a cell designed for eight.
Support from US government
Throughout the hearing Brunson spoke in Turkish. His wife was able to be in court. Also attending were the US Ambassador for Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, and Thom Tillis, a US senator from Brunson’s home state of North Carolina. The US State Department said prosecutors have no case against the pastor.
The American Center for Law and Justice said the 62-page indictment against Brunson accuses him of the supposed ‘crime’ of ‘Christianisation’. Brunson’s Turkish lawyer, Ismail Cem Halavurt, said that prosecutors interpret the pastor’s religious work as ‘aiding terror organisations’. ‘There is evidence that shows Brunson was arrested due to his faith,’ said Halavurt.
‘I don’t have any satisfaction that this court is able to make an independent, unbiased decision,’ Halavurt said. ‘If you look at the [legal] obligations of the court, this issue is crystal clear; to continue imprisonment is illegal.’ The lawyer said he would persist in demanding Brunson’s legal right to be released from custody for the duration of the trial.
President Erdogan had suggested publicly to the US that it swap ‘your pastor’ (Brunson) in exchange for Turkey’s demanded US extradition of ‘our cleric’ (Gülen) to Turkey. But the US judiciary contends that despite 80 boxes of evidence submitted against Gülen, who was once a close Erdogan ally, the files lack the hard, credible evidence required under US laws to extradite a legal permanent resident of the US back to Turkey.
Anonymous witness
Not quite three months after the attempted coup, Brunson was detained on 7 October 2016 during an investigation into his residency visa status. Initially told he would be deported within 15 days as a ‘threat to national security’, he was later accused by an anonymous witness of being linked with the Gülen movement and conducting ‘missionary activities’. The first hearing included ‘secret prosecution witnesses whose voices and appearances were disguised’.
Sensational allegations were thrown against Brunson by a secret witness called ‘Serhat’. He claimed Brunson was plotting to set up a Kurdish Christian state, helping transfer US weapons to a Kurdish militia in Syria with his ‘missionary team’, and collaborating with well-known supporters of Fethullah Gülen. Serhat admitted he was reporting on events third hand and was not an eyewitness to anything.
Missionary activity is legal
At the outset of the hearing, the presiding judge noted that missionary activity is in fact legal in Turkey. But the prosecution witness testimony revealed each individual’s distrust of ‘hidden’ motives behind Brunson’s Christian activities.
Brunson called for evidence to be produced for the accusations, but the presiding judge sharply reproved this demand, declaring that physical proof, such as photographs or documents, was not required for the court to decide what was credible evidence.
The closing paragraph of the indictment lists more than 60 individuals or organisations named throughout the document, declaring them all ‘suspects’ because of witness allegations that they were associated with Brunson and his activities. Halavurt is filing a formal protest over the exclusion of these key witnesses from his defence portfolio.
Secretive process
When Brunson had been put in jail, scores of headlines had appeared in the Turkish media, calling him everything from a ‘terrorist’ priest to a CIA spy, but the legal file against him was sealed, even against his Turkish lawyer.
Only when his indictment was finally released, six weeks before his trial, had Brunson learned he was being charged formally with terrorism and espionage, calling for combined prison terms of 35 years.
Brunson noted: ‘Ten of the accusations in this indictment are against [the Mormons], not me! I reject all the accusations in this indictment. I am a follower of Jesus Christ. My purpose here in Turkey is to tell people about Jesus and help disciple those who believe in him. I have not been involved in any illegal activity.’
‘We were always very open,’ he said, explaining their activities among Syrian Kurds out along the border as well as in his church in Izmir. He said testimonies from the various secret witnesses had exaggerated the extent of their activities among Kurdish refugees. He said ‘there were only ten to 12 people, sometimes as many as 20’, whom they had met with in Suruç.
