For a while I was almost at peace.
Almost.
But even as I walked away from meeting with Norine that day I could feel the fear. Yes, I now had something to hope for. But what if it didn’t happen? What if I was actually speeding toward heartbreak, not release? Could I really be so sure that God was not going to crush me again?
The closer I got to December 12 the more stress I felt. A new front opened up in the battle, and each day I focused on fighting through my fear to reach a place where I surrendered myself to whatever God had ahead for me. As difficult as it was, I knew it was vital. And I knew that I was powerless to change my feelings. I needed God to help me. I wanted to be willing to say yes to whatever God wanted, even if that meant staying longer in Harmandali so that God’s plans would be fully carried out. “With my will I submit to you,” I declared, so many times. “May this cup pass from me, but I submit with my will. Don’t look at my feelings, but at my words.”
Each day was the same battle. Only when I’d finally reach this place of relative peace and surrender would I let myself anticipate life after being released. I journaled my thoughts on how the previous two months had shaped me.
I will be more humble, I will be more gentle with those suffering or those who have doubts, I will speak more carefully . . .
I WAS LYING IN BED just before midnight on December 8, half asleep, when a female guard came into my room.
“Get your things. You’re going to be deported.”
For a brief moment I felt excited. Yes, it was four days early, but I’d already learned how slowly Turkish justice could move. Maybe this was the start of my release, the beginning of the end.
I got up and started gathering my clothes, then stopped. Something was wrong. Why come and get me at midnight? I’d already seen a few people deported from Harmandali, and all of them were released in the evening, taken to Istanbul overnight so that they could be flown out early the next day. “Am I really being deported? Are you sure about that?”
She shrugged.
I put down the T-shirt I was holding. “Would you go and find out, please? If I’m being deported I will leave a lot of this stuff here. But if I’m being moved . . .”
My voice caught in my throat, and the guard disappeared.
By the time she returned I was pacing the room.
“I’m not sure if you’re being deported but we’re moving you.”
Panic returned. My heart was racing, my thoughts thrashing around within me. “What’s happening?”
She said she knew nothing more than what she’d told me already. “Just pack.”
I looked around me. In the seven weeks that I had been at Harmandali, Norine had been allowed to bring me almost everything I asked for, especially since the visit from the US consul. I had blankets and a pillow, toiletries, clothes, wet wipes to clean the cell, and several books, pens, and papers. It was more than I could fit in my backpack. I was fumbling around, trying to figure out what to do when two more guards came in.
“We don’t know where you’re going but we know you’re going. So take everything.”
Whatever was going on, it didn’t sound right. I could feel myself starting to fall apart again, panicking about whether I was going to end up in a basement cell somewhere. And how would Norine know where I was? She’d found me before, but how much longer might it take this time?
The three guards hustled me out and I stumbled downstairs, my backpack overflowing with papers and clothes, my arms loaded with blankets.
As soon as I saw the two men in plain clothes with guns waiting by the front desk, I knew I was in real trouble. One of them, a man in his fifties, told me that they were police, while the younger guy—wearing tight jeans, a leather jacket, and a sneer—told me that they were here to arrest me. Before I could tell him that I was already under administrative arrest and awaiting deportation, he jabbed a finger at me.
“You’re under judicial arrest now.”
They had me empty everything I was carrying onto the desk and the young sneering policeman barked his orders at me, just like the gray-haired director had when I arrived. “Get that bag! Put some underwear in it. Put some socks in there too. And a toothbrush, but that’s it. Leave everything else!”
I was numb again.
Too shocked to say anything, too fearful to even think.
I reached for an extra pair of pants and the brightly colored T-shirt that I’d hung up in the window for Norine.
“No! I said you’ve got enough. You’re not taking anything else.”
The guards brought out a box with the rest of my possessions that they’d been keeping from me—my passport, some money to buy a plane ticket when I was released, my watch, the little cross that Norine had left me the night she’d been released from Isikkent. It was small enough to hide in your hand, and I thought about the verse written on it: We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.
The words had never felt so alien to me.
I turned to the older policeman. “Please, will someone call my wife and tell her? She doesn’t know.”
I gave him the number and he called. I was begging Norine to pick up, but there was no reply. Eventually he shrugged, ended the call, and nodded at the younger officer to pick up my file that was sitting on the table. “Let’s go” he said, pointing to the car waiting outside.
I WASN’T CUFFED in the back of the car, but as I sat next to the younger officer I was in no doubt that I was a prisoner. They ignored me all the way back to Izmir. As I made the customary visit to a hospital to confirm that I had not been tortured—the same one I was taken to when I collapsed in Isikkent, the same one that was just a few minutes away from my home, from my sleeping wife—they stuck close to my side.
A few blocks later the car pulled up outside a familiar building. It was just across from our old church building, and I had walked by it many times as it was being renovated. I hadn’t known what the place was going to be used for, but as we waited in front of the locked metal gates while the older police officer banged repeatedly on them, I saw the sign. They had brought me to the new Counter-Terror Police Center.
Once we were let inside it took two hours to process and transfer me to the basement cell that I had been dreading all along.
The bars across the front side of the cell ran floor to ceiling. Around the three walls was a narrow concrete ledge, just wide enough to sit on, but too narrow to lie down on. There was no bed, no mattress, no sink or toilet.
It was too dark to tell who was in the cells opposite. It was too cold and too uncomfortable and my heart was racing too fast for me to sleep. All I could do was lie on the concrete floor, wrapped in a blanket, and shout silently at God.
God, what are you doing? What are you allowing to happen? I’m supposed to be released on the twelfth, but here I am in this dungeon. How long will it be until Norine finds me? What is going to happen to me?
THE MORNING TRAFFIC was rumbling in the street overhead when I was taken from my cell. I was disoriented, not thinking straight from the combination of no sleep and too much adrenaline. But I did what I was told. I stepped into the car when directed, and gave the officer Norine’s cell phone number as we drove.
“Get your lawyer,” he ordered her. “He’s being taken to the Izmir courthouse right now for interrogation with the prosecutor.”
I didn’t get to hear what Norine said in reply. The officer didn’t wait to listen. He just hung up. The rest of the drive was in silence.
AS SOON AS I WALKED into the courthouse and was escorted to the corridor outside the offices of a prosecutor named Berkant Karakaya, I could feel the tension. In addition to the two police officers who had escorted me, there were several men with submachine guns—bodyguards for Karakaya’s boss, the chief prosecutor, Okan Batu.
I’d not heard of him before, but I knew the reputation of the office. Infidel Izmir may have been the home of the Turkish opposition, but it was exactly the kind of place that an ambitious prosecutor could come to and make a name for himself by aggressively pursuing those the government frowned upon.
I stood, weary and silent, and waited. For a while I let myself imagine that this might be the final twist before I was released. The more I thought about it, the more I believed that my release should be happening. After all, I was a citizen of a NATO ally, had been held for sixty-three days without access to a lawyer, and had been permitted only two visits from a consular official. Politicians in the US and other countries had been asking for my release—including Senator Bob Corker, who had met with the Turkish ambassador in Washington, DC, and handed him a letter to give to President Erdogan. It had been signed by seventeen senators and urged him to act. Erdogan had let loose, insulting President Obama after the election, but with President-elect Trump just weeks away from the inauguration, wasn’t it about time he started making nice with the US?
It seemed to me that this whole thing should have been an embarrassment for Turkey. Wouldn’t it be so much easier for them if they could just get rid of me quietly? And if that was what they wanted, then what better way than to wheel me out before a tough prosecutor, have him question me and acknowledge that there was no cause to hold me, and send me home?
“Andrew!” I looked up and saw Norine farther down the corridor. There were too many men with too many weapons between us for her to get close, but she stood and placed her hand on her heart and tried to smile. “This is how God is going to get you out!”
Before she could say anything else I was taken into Karakaya’s office. A Turkish woman sat next to me and introduced herself as Suna, the lawyer Norine had arranged for me. She had keen eyes that scanned the room as she spoke.
We had about two minutes for her to explain what was going to happen. She pointed out my prosecutor and explained that he was the one who would ask me questions.
The minute Okan Batu walked in and sat next to his deputy, the room fell silent. Not just quiet, or hushed, but the kind of silence that makes you scared to breathe.
Turks—especially nationalists—like to identify with wolves. It’s not unusual to see soccer fans and street demonstrators pinching their ring and middle fingers with their thumbs like a wolf’s snout, their first and pinky fingers stuck up like the ears.
Okan Batu was the alpha wolf they would all obey.
Suna shifted in her seat. Nobody dared to speak. All eyes were on Okan Batu.
And his eyes—filled with pure hatred—were fixed on me.
“Andrew Brunson,” said my prosecutor. “You gave a speech in October 2013 praising Fethullah Gulen.”
It took me a moment to process his words. Like everyone in Turkey I had heard of Fethullah Gulen, the exiled head of the Gulen movement—an Islamist group that had started schools in over 170 countries. Gulen and Erdogan had been allies of a sort for many years, but when police and prosecutors conducted a corruption probe in 2013 that snared people close to Erdogan, including his son, Erdogan went on the warpath against everyone associated with Gulen. Three years later, Fethullah Gulen was accused of being behind the failed coup, and his supporters made up the bulk of the tens of thousands of people who had been rounded up and locked away.
I couldn’t remember my preaching schedule from 2013, but I knew for a fact that I’d never said anything praising either Fethullah Gulen or his movement. I tried to steady my voice and avoid looking at Okan Batu as I replied. “I’ve never met a Gulenist in my life, sir. And I’ve never spoken in support of them. Please, tell me what meeting I was at when I supposedly said this.”
I’ve spoken Turkish for years, and people never have trouble understanding me, but I may as well have been speaking in code. He stared at me, then carried on with his questions, ignoring mine. “Have you ever been to the Zaman newspaper building?” This was a Gulenist newspaper.
“I have never been there. I don’t even know where it is.”
“Have you been preaching in Kurdish?”
“No! I don’t speak Kurdish. I don’t support Kurdish separatism and I don’t support separatism in any way. I believe in the indivisibility of the Turkish land.”
After a pause, Okan Batu spoke. “What do you mean by that?” Everybody knew what I meant. The indivisibility of the land is a hot topic in Turkey where the PKK, the Kurdish separatist group, had been fighting for their autonomy for years. I was being honest when I said I didn’t support that in any form. But that wasn’t good enough for Okan Batu and his eyes blazed even more fiercely. “It’s not just the land that has to be united, it’s anything else that could cause divisions among Turks.”
I knew then that I was in danger. He was talking about me as a missionary, putting me on par with the forces that were trying to destabilize his homeland. To my mind, Christianity could only mean good things for Turkey. To a man like Okan Batu, a nationalist Muslim determined to repel all outside forces, my faith made me a clear enemy.
“Please, let me go home. I have never done anything to hurt Turkey. I was arrested so that I could be deported. Please, let me go home to the US.”
My prosecutor held up his hand. “No,” he said quietly. “I think there are enough reasons to keep you while we continue our investigations.”
Suna turned to me. Her face was grim.
I whispered to her, “They’re going to put me in prison, aren’t they?”
She was not one to give false hope. “You will go before a judge, so there is still a chance. But yes, he will send you to prison.”
Almost immediately I was taken to wait in another corridor outside a judge’s office. Norine found me, and though we were separated by two glass doors, she stood where I could see her the whole hour I waited. When I placed my hand on my heart, she did the same. It was our way of saying “I love you.”
Eventually I was taken before the judge, who looked at me and frowned. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I know what questions they just asked me but there were no formal charges made. How can I defend myself when I don’t even know what the charges are against me?”
The judge stared with haughty indifference.
“Please,” I begged. “I haven’t done anything. Please, just send me home.”
He looked away. “Send him to prison.”
I WAS TAKEN BACK to the corridor to wait while they decided which prison to send me to. Norine was there, beyond the glass doors, hand on her heart again. My mom had arrived too. They were both pale with shock, their faces heavy with sorrow. Mom held her arms out in front of her, rocking them from side to side like she was holding a baby. Some of the bodyguards and police standing around me pointed at her and mocked.
The noise around me, the people jostling and laughing, it all faded away. I heard someone tell me that they were sending me to Sakran, but the name meant nothing to me. All I had was this panic, this fear, this pain of being so close to my wife, and yet not being able to touch her.
The two policemen who had been by my side all day moved me down the corridor toward the stairwell. I checked to see that Norine and my mom were following behind.
One of the officers stopped us. “Go ahead,” he said, pointing at Norine. “You have one minute.”
I felt Norine put her arms around me. I clung to her neck.
I started crying. “They’re sending me to prison, Norine. Please go public and fight for me.”
“I’m going to fight for you. There’s an appeal coming up on Monday. It’s the twelfth. We’ll appeal it and maybe they’ll release you, my love. The twelfth, remember?”
The twelfth? That all seemed like it belonged to another lifetime.
The tears were coming faster now. It was hard to speak, the words getting stuck in my mouth, mixed with tears and gasps for breath. “Norine, I’m going to prison . . . I’m going to prison.” The policeman pulled me away. I looked back one last time before we turned a corner, and then I was gone. They walked me past the basement cells, photographed and fingerprinted me again. Then they put me in the back of the police car.
I sat, stunned by everything that had just happened.
The wolf had caught me.