I followed Nejat’s finger pointing to the ticker running across the bottom of the screen. “Priest Brunson released to house arrest for health reasons.”
It was the last thing I expected. Over the twenty-two months I had been locked away I had thought a lot about how they might let me go. Maybe they’d take me directly to the airport from the prison, or perhaps they’d stash me away in a deportation center like Harmandali first. But house arrest? That had never even crossed my mind. And what health reasons were they referring to? I was confused.
The prison director came into the cell, a handful of guards behind him. “Andrew, you’ve been released to house arrest. Gather your things.”
I didn’t say anything. No questions, no queries. I was too busy throwing everything that I wanted to take with me into trash bags. The pile of items that I was leaving grew ever larger. When I was done I grabbed my guitar and turned to Nejat, pointing at the collection of tuna cans, toothpaste, blank notepads, and pens that I was leaving. “All these things I leave to you.” We hugged at the door.
“Any offenses against me, do you release them?” He knew we would probably never see each other again, and like any good Muslim Nejat felt the need to end on good terms, or face paying for any offenses on judgment day.
I smiled at him. “Yes, of course, my friend.” There was nothing to forgive. The only debt between us was a debt of gratitude for all the encouragement and kindness he had shown me. We hugged again and I felt deeply sad that this good man and father of three was being left imprisoned unjustly.
As I followed the director downstairs the place was buzzing. Phones were ringing and people were hurrying. “Where’s your wife?” the director asked me at one point. “She’s not answering her phone.”
I had no idea where she was. I had no idea about anything. It was all so surreal. Thirty minutes earlier I had been pacing in the courtyard, praying. I’d woken up with the same familiar fear and dull terror that greeted me every morning, and I was midway through my daily battle to surrender.
After I’d been officially processed out and had my passport, IDs, and money returned to me, I was bustled outside. For the first time I was not handcuffed. There was no bulletproof vest to wear and no decoy bus ready to leave without me. There was just me, a pile of my clothes and books and—most importantly—my letters in trashbags, and several police officers around me, waiting for someone to tell them what to do next.
“Wait!” I remembered the letter I’d written to Norine. It had felt so significant as I wrote it, and I wanted to take it with me. Now that my prison account was closed they would not mail it on, so one of the prison directors was kind enough to send a guard to look for it in the mailroom.
The waiting continued and I stood quietly while people came and went. Several police cars lined up, and my belongings were loaded into one of them. When the main gates opened I could see a crowd of media gathered outside. A guard ran up to me and handed me my letter to Norine.
“Thank you,” I said, holding it close. Whatever was coming next I wanted to remember the place of surrender that I’d reached in Buca.
EVERY SINGLE MAJOR NEWS OUTLET appeared to have heard about my release and sent a vehicle to trail our convoy. There was too much to process, and as soon as someone told me that they’d heard from Norine and that she was also part of the traffic flowing behind us, I closed my eyes. Soon I’d be home again with my wife. That was all that really mattered.
When we finally pulled up outside our apartment in Izmir the police had closed off our narrow street. That hadn’t stopped people crowding around the barriers though, and we waited in the car until Norine called to say that she was inside the apartment. There had been a small logistical problem—I didn’t have my keys anymore, so we had to wait for her to arrive. As soon as I stepped out of the car, I was swarmed.
All the noise, the camera, and the faces trying to press close and break through the guards who surrounded me—it was chaotic. After spending so long seeing the same few faces day in and day out, this felt intense. I could see some of my friends from church in the crowd—singing and celebrating. I was very emotional—the last time I had been here was when I got up from breakfast and innocently walked out the door to visit the police station almost twenty-two months ago. I had been sure I would never step foot in my apartment again. As the police walked me up the stairs I caught sight of Norine. She was waiting on the small stairwell landing in front of our flat, but when she saw me she launched herself down the stairs and threw her arms around my neck. This was an impossible dream come true.
The police officers hurried us inside. As soon as we were in, Norine and I got down on our knees in the living room, embraced each other, and prayed. “Thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you.”
The six officers stayed with us for a couple of hours. They set up the monitoring box and fitted me with an ankle bracelet, telling me not to take it off or leave the apartment. There was a constant buzz of noise from the street outside and so many people asking to see us, but the police told us they wouldn’t allow any visitors that night. “Just be quiet here tonight, okay?”
It was fine by me. I hadn’t spoken to Jordan, our eldest son, since the arrest, and I was desperate to call. As soon as I saw his face on my phone, I wept. I couldn’t say a word for five minutes. We must have spent a few hours on the phone talking with Jacqueline, Blaise, and my parents.
Norine put on a worship song. For twenty-two months this kind of music had been torn from my world. I’d heard plenty of Turkish music in prison, but nothing that spoke to me of God’s love and care. As the sound filled me from the inside out, I lay on our bed, overcome with emotion.
Suddenly I remembered the letter that I’d finished the day before. It was crumpled from being in my pocket, but as I handed it to Norine I tried to explain why it was so important. “You know how I struggled, how low I went, how broken I was? I wrote this last night, not knowing I was about to be released. It says ‘I am willing to drink the cup, to the dregs.’ I want you to know how I finished at Buca. I finished in victory. Norine, by the grace of God I ended well.”
THE NEXT DAY WAS JUST AS STRANGE. I woke up in my own bed, next to my wife, not to the sound of guards doing roll call, but of police talking on the street below our window. I was no longer in prison, but I was still far from being free. We could not fully rejoice because house arrest was not enough—it needed to go to a full release, and we had no guarantee of that. We were delighted, but apprehensive.
The news of my release to house arrest was big in the Turkish media. Every news site I visited or TV channel I flicked on to was carrying the story. And as the day wore on I gained a clearer understanding of why I’d been released.
In the course of their discussions, Erdogan had asked President Trump to secure the release of a Turkish citizen who had been detained in another Middle Eastern country. Trump had helped and the individual in question arrived back in Turkey on July 15, three days before my third trial day. There had been other discussions about the Turkish banker, now convicted in the US of violating the embargo against Iran, and there was an agreement that if I was released he would be allowed to serve the rest of his sentence at home. But at the last minute, when an agreement was already in place, the Turks broke the deal by drastically increasing their demands, asking that the US investigation into the state bank Halkbank—which was likely to result in billions of dollars in fines—be dropped completely before releasing me. Trump had gotten angry at Erdogan, banging his desk while on the phone and yelling at him, “We had a deal!”
This explained the abrupt stop to my third trial session, and why the judge’s demeanor suddenly changed and he quickly wrapped things up. He must have been told that the deal was off and that I was to be returned to Buca.
My release to house arrest was Erdogan’s way of trying to backtrack, and the Turkish media presented it as a simple communication problem. The way they told it, President Trump thought that Erdogan had said I would be going home to the US, when in fact Erdogan meant home to house arrest in Izmir.
It was the last straw, and on my first full day at home President Trump took to Twitter to make the US position clear: “The United States will impose large sanctions on Turkey for their long time detainment of Pastor Andrew Brunson, a great Christian, family man and wonderful human being. He is suffering greatly. This innocent man of faith should be released immediately!”
President Trump wasn’t the only US politician making the Turkish news that day. Vice President Pence addressed Erdogan directly in a speech, telling him: “To President Erdogan and the Turkish government, I have a message on behalf of the president of the United States of America. Release Pastor Andrew Brunson now, or be prepared to face the consequences. If Turkey does not take immediate action to free this innocent man of faith and send him home to America, the United States will impose significant sanctions on Turkey until Pastor Andrew Brunson is free.”
The message could not have been more clear: if Turkey did not release me, sanctions were coming.
The response from the Turkish media was equally clear: I should be sent back to prison straightaway. This was really frightening.
Things were chaotic, but there was a feeling that something could happen soon, even over the weekend.
Very late the next night, a former US ambassador came to visit us. He had made contact through mutual friends, and we were led to believe he was in some way involved in brokering a deal between the governments.
We googled him and confirmed that he was an American, and had been an ambassador years ago. But even though he wanted my situation to be resolved, it did not take long before we realized that it was not my government’s interests he was representing. It was Turkey’s.
He wanted to talk about the threat of sanctions. “This isn’t the way to do things,” he said. “This is a mistake and you need to get to Trump and tell him to back off.”
Norine and I looked at each other. “Well,” I said, standing up and walking him to the door. “I’m not going to do that. I don’t tell the president what to do. I certainly wish no harm on the Turkish people, but I don’t believe this will be resolved without some action by the US. Erdogan has had many opportunities to make this right but has chosen not to.”
THE NEXT DAY CAME AND WENT. The weekend slipped by. “Be ready to go,” we were told. “A week, maybe ten days.” We took the advice and started to pack our clothes, cautiously hopeful that we would soon be leaving Turkey behind us.
The ten-day mark approached, and I was still trapped inside the apartment, still wearing the ankle bracelet, still looking out onto the street to see police officers guarding me. And still there was no sign that Turkey was cooperating. It was not for lack of trying by others. Senators Lankford, Shaheen, and Tillis had introduced a bill to block the transfer of the F-35 fighter planes, and ninety-eight members of the EU parliament—from twenty-one nations—had signed on to a letter asking Turkey for my release. But now President Trump moved as well, backing up his threat with action.
The US Treasury implemented the Global Magnitsky Act, blocking the assets of Turkey’s justice minister and interior minister, two men they accused of being responsible for my arrest and detention. The main effect of this was to give a message that the US was willing to take steps. The market noted it, and the Turkish lira took an immediate hit. “The relationship is now officially in crisis,” said one former government official in the New York Times. “And the only way out is for Erdogan to do what he hates the most: back down.”
The longer my half freedom went on, the harder it became to imagine going back to prison. At Buca I had been focused in like a marathon runner who is worn out but keeps running, refusing to take a break in fear that he will not be able to start up again. But now I was together with Norine, could talk to our kids, see friends, access news—the list of good things was so long. The day I returned to our apartment I had told Norine, “It’s okay if I have to go back, if that’s what it takes to fulfill God’s plans. I’ll be okay. I will just be grateful for this day I have with you.” But it was getting harder to think this way.
And yet I could not ignore the possibility that I might well be sent back to prison. Ten days had passed and nothing had happened. Relations between the two countries were low and getting lower.
“Norine,” I said quietly one morning. “What if they’re not letting us go?”