The courtroom at Sakran wasn’t built to hold trials. It was built to host basketball matches. As I sat on my chair, my hands and legs shaking, staring up at the roof that towered above me, it seemed to me that almost everything about it was designed to throw me off balance and make me feel small.
I was sitting in an area that had been fenced off by a low wooden railing. Cem was way over on the side of the hall, so to communicate with him I had to get permission from the judge and then walk over accompanied by a couple of soldiers. Behind me, separated by a sea of what must have been five hundred empty seats, was the public gallery. If I turned around I could pick Norine out, but even straining my eyes, faces were a blur. When I first walked in the room Norine stood and waved so I would know where she was. In any case, Cem had told me not to look. “Keep your eyes to the front,” he’d said. Most of the time I followed his advice, but when I turned to look at her, Norine would do what she could to encourage me—a hand over her heart meant “I love you and am with you,” a thumbs-up told me “Well done!” and a finger pointing up told me to look to God.
The three judges were ten feet in front of me on a dais raised at least five or six feet high—so high that I had to tilt my head back to see. Next to them—right next to them on the dais itself—was the prosecutor. On either side of them were two jumbo-sized video screens, each large enough for a movie theater.
I’d not been able to sleep at all the previous night, or the night before that. I hadn’t eaten either, but the worst of it was that I had not been given my meds that morning. I was wired enough as it was without the sleep or the food, but without the Xanax my anxiety was in full flow. All I could think about was the fact that I was facing thirty-five years in prison and that even before it began everything about the trial was designed to find me guilty.
Cem had warned me that even though I was technically innocent until proven guilty, the fact that mine was a political crime meant that it was on me to prove my innocence. His words rang through my head as I listened to the judge open the trial with some preliminary business. The longer he spoke, the worse my shaking became.
Eventually the judge indicated that it was my turn to stand and address him.
When I spoke into the microphone, I was surprised that my voice was firm and strong. “Andrew Craig Brunson. I want to make my defense,” I said, consulting the pages of handwritten notes that I had brought with me. The judge said nothing, and his two colleagues stared, stony-faced, at me. So I continued.
I went through every paragraph of the indictment, addressing every false claim and inaccuracy that the prosecutor had laid out against me. I stood perfectly still, my voice holding out, all the obscure Turkish legal words coming quickly to my mind, my hands and legs no longer shaking. Minutes went by and I carried on, explaining carefully and clearly why each and every accusation was groundless.
All through the morning I spoke, taking just the occasional sip from a bottle of water. The lead judge hardly ever looked at me or at my lawyer. Often when I looked up to check on him he’d be leaning over talking to one of the other judges, ignoring me completely. But I carried on. It was like I had a divine grace on me to speak clearly in spite of my panic, my trauma, and the lack of sleep, meds, and food.
When the three-hour mark was approaching, the judge interrupted and told me that it was time to break. The grace lifted and I panicked, suddenly drained of all the energy and focus that I’d had all morning. “Please,” I begged the judge, “at the end of the day send me back to Buca.” I was careful, because a director had warned me that very morning not to complain about the prison or the staff. “The problem isn’t the prison, it’s me—I have experienced a lot of trauma at Sakran.”
The judge shrugged and said he’d consider it later, then waved at the two soldiers on either side to take me. They took me by the arms and pulled me along. The hall filled with noise as people went off for lunch, and I glanced helplessly at Norine as they took me into the holding cell.
The afternoon was harder than the morning. I spoke for a further three hours, then answered pointed questions about a text message that I’d sent to a pastor friend a few days after the coup. I had written that Turkey was being shaken—by the coup, and also the after-coup purges and acceleration toward one-man rule—but that this hardship would result in many people turning to Jesus: “I think things will become darker, and we will also see breakthrough in glory and miracles. We win in the end.” The judge insisted this was proof that I had helped to plan the coup.
I tried to be clear in my defense, telling the judge that I had preached for many years that God allows the things we trust in to be shaken, so that we will turn to him. The judge did not seem at all impressed.
THEN IT WAS MY TURN to listen as three witnesses testified. Before each spoke they were sworn in by the flamboyant clerk of the court, who directed everyone present to stand and follow his lead as he puffed out his chest and pompously held his hand over his heart, his head tilted back, gazing with the look of a true believer into the distance, proud to be a part of Turkish justice in action as each false witness took his solemn oath. And while it made me want to laugh, the sight of the secret witnesses giving their testimony from another location and appearing like big brother on the two screens that loomed overhead disgusted me and made me angry. This was a cynical game. There was no good reason to keep them secret since there was no security risk for them. In fact, we knew their identity in each case, but because it is a crime to say who they are, we were kept from exposing their motivations and lies. And the judge told them that as secret witnesses they did not have to answer any questions they did not want to.
All the witnesses, the ones who hid their identity and the ones who did not, lied.
The one code-named Dua spun a long story about how he had heard me teach that the Kurds were the thirteenth lost tribe of Israel, and I was actively working to dismember Turkey to set up a Christian state for them. I had never heard of a thirteenth tribe, let alone preached it, but Dua confidently asserted that all Christians teach this, and that I shared this idea with the Mormons, and in fact that I was the leader of a Mormon church.
I couldn’t believe it when the judge solemnly asked Dua to explain more about CAMA, the crazy conspiracy theory he had detailed in the indictment. Dua assured the judge that all pastors in Turkey were agents of the American deep state sent to break up Turkey. It all sounded like a James Bond movie, and I wanted to laugh. But the judges and prosecutor were not laughing. They were listening intently.
DUA WASN’T DONE. He had plenty more to say about me. According to him I had gathered information about people working on the railroads to prepare for an invasion of Turkey, and this proved I was a military spy. Apart from never having seen any of this before, I asked the judge whether the names of railroad employees were even classified to begin with. The judge said, “We will determine what is a state secret.” Cem pulled out a thick stack of printouts and slapped it down on the table in front of him as he asked to submit some evidence to the court. The judge reluctantly nodded for the clerk to take it. It was a list of all the employees of the state railroad, an even longer one than Dua had given. “I googled these and downloaded them from the internet,” announced Cem. “Anybody can do this. How can you say this is secret information?” The judge was silent, clearly unhappy.
I watched the blurred outline of Dua’s face and listened to his digitally distorted voice—a low growl like some kind of horror movie—as he went on for several hours. I wanted to stand up and shout that he was a fraud. I knew that he’d been kicked out of a church for swindling people. He told the judge, “Brunson baptized twenty-five people, took their money, and told them he could help get them to Canada.” Actually, this was just one of the tricks he had pulled. I knew that he’d then worked as a translator for the Mormons before they kicked him out. That was when he’d opened a court case against them, but lost, and it was those same accusations that had failed against the Mormons that he was now recycling against me. But my hands were tied. The prosecutor would open a new court case against me if I exposed who he was. So I sat in silence and prayed that the truth would somehow come out.
The next secret witness we knew very well. She had caused all kinds of problems in the short time she was in our church and had left threatening, “Just wait and see what I do to you.” It had made us feel sick to learn that she was an actual witch, deeply involved in the occult.
More than once the judge berated me for not following correct protocol—like not responding to a witness with a statement or not approaching the podium when he addressed me. It was exhausting, and by the time he brought the trial to a conclusion it was getting close to ten at night.
“The next date for this trial is May 7. You will remain in prison.” I begged the judge to return me to Buca. He said he would recommend a move, but added that he could not make that decision. Two military police officers grabbed my arms and led me toward the prisoner exit. “Norine!” I shouted, struggling to see her in the crowd at the back of the hall. “Get me out of here! I’m going crazy!” Senator Tillis had come, along with Sam Brownback, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, and other friends from various churches were present. I was nearly at the door, but I was so grateful for their support. I knew some had come just to pray me through. I filled my lungs for one final shout: “Thank you to all who came!”
Minutes later, I was back in my cell in Sakran. Alone.
SENATOR TILLIS’S REACTION to what he’d seen in court that Monday was instant and strong. In the trial I had been accused of having a secret room in the church where secret meetings took place around a secret map that showed how I was planning on dividing up the country for the Kurds. Several witnesses testified to seeing this room and described PKK flags hanging on the walls and other propaganda material around the church. On the Tuesday, Senator Tillis asked Norine to show him around the church so that he could see this secret room for himself. It was just our small church office. By Friday, a bipartisan group of sixty-six senators led by Senators Tillis and Jeanne Shaheen had sent a letter to Erdogan demanding my release. The letter called my indictment “an absurd collection of anonymous accusations, flights of fantasy, and random character assassination. . . . It is an insult not only to an unjustly imprisoned individual, but to the traditions of Turkish jurisprudence.”
As for me, for a third night running I couldn’t sleep. I had no appetite and could do nothing but lie on my bed, feeling crushed. For months I had been winning small victories at Buca, but now I had been knocked down again. I was ready to give up.
Even the guards appeared to be concerned about me. “Come, come,” said the head guard the day after the trial—a man who had previously been harsh with me when I’d been in my old cell. “I’ll help you outside. It’ll be good for you to get some air. Come.”
Finally I gave in, but after ten minutes in the courtyard I asked to go back inside. Even without the trial the thought of being stuck in Sakran again was too much.
The head guard took me back and left me. I lay there alone, fearful, and with terrible grief pouring down my cheeks. The thoughts kept going through my mind: Where are you, God? Why have you let them return me to this awful place? Why have you not intervened for me? Why are you so far away, so silent?
I opened my mouth, weeping aloud, and the words I heard murmured stunned me: “I love you, Jesus!”
And again, “I love you, Jesus! I love you, Jesus!”
Immediately I realized, Here is my victory! In my lowest point the cry of my heart was one of love to Jesus. I was elated. This was a triumph in my heart, a response to God that showed me how different things were for me now. When I was in Sakran before I had been so full of fear and pain. I still had fear and pain, but I had just discovered how deep my devotion was. It had been tried and proven true.
EVEN THOUGH I WAS IN A SOLITARY CELL, there was some contact with other inmates. I couldn’t see them, but if we raised our voices I could talk to the men in the cells on either side of mine through the window, and whenever someone was walking in the courtyard it was possible to talk to him too. That’s how I discovered that the people around me were military men who had been charged with playing a major part in the attempted coup. Of the few I met briefly, two were generals and the others were elite soldiers. Whatever lies and charges I was facing, I was sure that their prospects were far worse than mine.
It was one of the generals who had first spoken to me when I arrived the night before my trial. Now a second general encouraged me. “Be strong,” he said. “Be strong. When I was brought in here I wanted to die too. I wanted to give up. But I became strong and the same will happen to you. And besides, I’ve been watching your case. They’re going to let you out in the next trial.”
I wasn’t sure that he was right about the release, but I drew comfort from his thoughtfulness. And one of my neighbors showed his kindness in another way. Through the bars of his window he dropped a cold Coke and a bowl to eat from to a prisoner taking his one hour in the courtyard, who then lobbed it up to my window. He also passed on some encouraging news he had heard on TV. The day after my trial President Trump had tweeted that I was being persecuted in Turkey for no reason: “They call him a spy, but I am more a spy than he is.”
“It’s going to be all right,” said the man standing in the courtyard. “Don’t worry. It’s all going to work out.”
“Go ahead,” said the general, “tell the priest what you’re in for.”
The man laughed. “I was on the team that’s accused of being the assassination squad. But we were just told at the last minute that we needed to go to a certain hotel in the city. We didn’t even have an address, and we had to stop at a local store to ask for directions. Does that sound like the way an elite squad would go about assassinating a president?”
What could I say? I knew he was in a world of trouble.
Their encouragement and perspective really touched me. I couldn’t believe that men who were facing life in solitary confinement were trying to lift my spirits.
LATER, WHEN I WAS TAKEN to see the prison psychologist, as all new intakes must, things went sour again.
“Andrew, we’re going to take good care of you. So you’re going to stay here for a few months, maybe a few years, but you’ll be fine here.”
I broke down. “Please just ask them to send me back!”
She paused. “Okay. I’ll ask.” But I knew she couldn’t do much.
I slumped back to my cell. I had hope that between Norine, the embassy, and some of our friends in the US government that I would be moved. But how long would it take? And there were no guarantees. They could keep me here just to increase the pressure. I settled in to wait.
But I didn’t have to wait long. On the fifth day, two guards opened my cell door and told me that they were sending me back to Buca.
“Really? When?”
“Now.”
I gathered the handful of clothes, my trial notes, and my Bible and was ready to go within minutes. I managed a smile at the guard as I thanked him.
He quickly waved my words away. “Honestly, we’re all breathing a sigh of relief that you’re going.”
I never thought I could be happy to go to prison, but it was such a relief to return to my cell in Buca. Nejat was pleased to see me and greeted me like I had never been away.