President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, while announcing the state of emergency July 21, said the decision was taken to eradicate the presence of the Fethullah Gulen movement in the state structure and elsewhere in the country. But since then, Kurds, Alevis, socialists and now the Protestants who had nothing to do with Gulenists are increasingly being targeted.

Developments in recent weeks have been seriously disturbing to Turkey’s Protestant community, believed to be around 7,000 people.

One development was closing down the Church of Antakya (Antioch). Its justification is hard to understand. The Ministry of Education claims that a nongovernmental organization (NGO) once offered English-language courses on church premises without official permission and that the NGO should therefore be closed down. The police carried out the ministry’s request by closing the down the church. So the sanction was applied to an incorrect entity, but it hasn’t been rectified and the church remains closed.

The Rev. Craig Brunson, pastor of the Dirilis Church in Izmir, and his wife, Norine Lyn Brunson, were detained Oct 7. The Izmir Immigration Office somehow included the couple among those implicated as a "threat to national security activities" and sought their deportation. The Brunsons, who are still in detention, are now awaiting expulsion. According to the information obtained by Al-Monitor, they have not been allowed to communicate with their lawyers or British consular officials during their detention.