Jailed US pastor finally appears in Turkish court
American Pastor Andrew Brunson, who has become a political football between the United States and Turkey, finally got a chance this week to address a Turkish court.
After 18 months in detention, the North Carolina pastor who has become a political football between America and Turkey finally got a chance this week to tell a Turkish court what he thought of being charged with terrorism and espionage.
“I don’t accept any of the allegations,” Andrew Craig Brunson told the judge. “I have never done anything against Turkey. On the contrary, I love Turkey. I have been praying for Turkey for 25 years.”
It was a passionate appeal, delivered in Turkish, from a 50-year-old man who, until his arrest in October 2016, was the little-known pastor of a Protestant church with a congregation of about 25 people in Izmir, a city on the Aegean coast.
Brunson was among tens of thousands of people arrested in Turkey’s crackdown on alleged followers of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish Islamic cleric based in Pennsylvania, after the coup attempt of July 2016. The state claimed Gulen had instigated the attempt, in which 250 Turks died, but the cleric denied any involvement.
