I was locked in. The police had buttoned down security so tight on the street that one newspaper reported that “even the birds cannot fly without permission.” They checked Norine’s purse and even her grocery bags when she came back from the store, and whenever our friends came to visit us they were stopped, searched, and their ID and images sent through to the prosecutor’s office before they were allowed in.
We were advised to cut back on visitors and just wait. The media would try to talk to Norine whenever she went to our church, and photographers often lay in wait when she left the relative safety of our cordoned-off street. We kept as low a profile as we possibly could, not talking to anyone in the media—in Turkey or at home. We stayed away from Facebook and wrote no letters to anyone about our case.
The Turkish press became obsessed with my story. Badly photoshopped images of me appeared in the papers—me on a joker card, me on the dollar bill, my head stuck on Rambo’s body. Every story ended by repeating as fact the same old accusations against me. It was very frustrating that no matter what answers Cem or I gave in court, or how thoroughly we discredited the witnesses, the media never reported any of it.
It did not take long for the media to get even more intense. They had good reason to. When it became clear that President Erdogan was not going to be moved by the Magnitsky Act sanctions placed on two of his leading ministers, President Trump doubled the tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum.
The Turkish lira dropped dramatically. According to some reports, as much as $40 billion was wiped off the Turkish stock market. Everyone was affected. The Economist called me “the world’s most expensive prisoner.” The Turkish media called it “The Brunson Crisis.”
I was still stuck in the apartment. It was wonderful to be out of prison, but soon the bars on our windows—standard issue for most Turkish city homes—made me feel like a bird in a cage. And with every passing day the hostility toward me increased. At first it had been mainly Erdogan’s supporters who had a reason to be mad at me, because I was accused of being in league with Fethullah Gulen. Then all the people who despised the PKK turned on me when the media started that line. But now, with inflation rising and the markets tanking, everybody in the country had reason to hate me. Between twenty and thirty police and soldiers were on guard around our little building at all times. There was usually a police or military armored vehicle parked outside. They weren’t there to keep me in—they were there to keep others out. I was told not to go out on our balcony or stand in front of windows for fear of snipers. They had made me a target.
There was a whirlwind going on and I was getting the blame. I even read that the contagion was spreading to emerging markets and that Argentina was about to default on its debt because of investors pulling out of Turkey. Yet the Turkish economy had structural problems that had been there for a long time. The sanctions President Trump was imposing were simply the straw that broke the camel’s back, as investors spooked and started to pull out of Turkey. But Erdogan seized the opportunity to pin all Turkey’s financial problems on the US, and on me.
The death of the Turkish economy appeared to be just around the corner, and President Trump announced that he was prepared to do more than just hike the tariffs. On one call back home with a friend who was working closely with the White House, we heard Trump’s plan boiled down to its most simple, powerful form: “He knows that there’s a price they’re willing to pay, and a price they’re not willing to pay.”
I THOUGHT A LOT ABOUT PHARAOH in those days. I wondered whether something similar was going on with Erdogan. In the Bible, Moses was calling for Pharaoh to let his people go, but Pharaoh kept hardening his heart. Was Erdogan’s heart being hardened? Why else would he allow Turkey to be so badly affected? Several times in the last couple of years the Turkish government had made moves toward resolving my case, and then pulled back. Would they do the same thing again? Because instead of trying to repair relations with the US, Erdogan seemed to be raising the stakes.
And President Trump was not backing down. On August 17, he tweeted: “Turkey has taken advantage of the United States for many years. They are now holding our wonderful Christian Pastor, who I must now ask to represent our Country as a great patriot hostage. We will pay nothing for the release of an innocent man, but we are cutting back on Turkey!” We weren’t sure what the implications were of being asked to be a “patriot hostage.” Jay Sekulow, who was also one of Trump’s lawyers now, called us to explain: Wait. Be patient for this to be done the right way.
The media reports grew darker and darker. They were no longer just content with running polls about sending me back to prison, they were openly speculating on the plots to kill me. Some suggested that the CIA had me listed as a target (“The same way they knocked down their own towers on 9/11”), while others argued that Israeli Mossad would be more likely to kill me as it would have the added benefit of messing up the relationship between the US and Turkey. Still others said that there were CIA and Mossad teams staying in apartments near our house, but their goal was to rescue, not to kill me. To some these were just harmless conspiracy theories, but I knew that the media in Turkey was no more independent than the judiciary. They could be preparing the ground for some scenario, just in case. Maybe some disaffected group—a faction within the government, or powerful businessmen—would take action to remove the problem and put an end to the crisis. I could be killed. Or disappear. Or be spirited out of Turkey and set loose. This could be done independently, or even with Erdogan’s secret approval. I didn’t sit around worrying about it, but I considered the possibilities. In Turkey, a land of intrigue and conspiracies, anything could happen.
Once or twice a week I would jump from bed in the middle of the night, jerked from sleep by pounding on our door and the insistent ringing of the doorbell. The police were conducting random checks to make sure I was still in the apartment. Whether night or day, I never knew what would happen. I could be taken to prison at a moment’s notice, or just taken. When I answered the door I did it with cell phone in hand, a text message ready to send in case it were needed.
Soon after I was released to house arrest I had tried to come off my medication, cutting out the sleeping meds and antidepressants and dropping down the Xanax. But as the tension mounted and the prospect of going back to prison grew, my anxiety rose. I did not want to be on meds, but it wasn’t hard to see that I needed to go back to my original Xanax dose.
And I also needed to listen to my wife. Several times in the afternoon Norine came home and found me bouncing around, anxious and disturbed.
“What have you been reading?”
I’d show her a video of protestors smashing Apple products on the street or burning dollars while they were shouting “Allahu Akbar,” or I’d point out an article in which Erdogan talked of economic war and said, “You dare to sacrifice 81 million Turks for a priest who is linked to terror groups?” I thought it was the other way around, that Erdogan was willing to push his relationship with the US to the breaking point just to keep me in prison. And my fear was that at some point President Trump could decide the price was too high—even though I was an innocent man. The miracle was that Trump was not backing down.
Norine would tell me to stop reading and watching anything about me. I knew she was right.
IT WASN’T JUST THE MEDIA that fueled my apprehensions. Norine was out at church one afternoon in September. I was midway through a workout on a treadmill, covered in sweat and out of breath, when the police called up.
“There’s a priest here to see you. Father James?”
I thought I recognized the name as someone from an Anglican church in Izmir, so I told them to let him up.
When I opened the door I realized that I was mistaken. Father James wasn’t who I thought he was, and he wasn’t alone either. He introduced me to the two men he was with, an American businessman and a Turkish lawyer. I decided to hear them out.
“A lot of Turkish companies have foreign debt,” said the businessman. “Some are going to be forced to close soon, and there are a lot of business leaders in Turkey and the US that want this resolved.”
I was wary. Was this the kind of situation we had been concerned about, where a group might try to get me out without Erdogan’s knowledge and make things even worse for me in the process? I told them that whatever they had to say I wanted Norine to hear as well, so I gave her a quick call.
“You need to come home right now. I’m not in trouble but there are some people here.”
She was back within a few minutes, ready to hear the businessman continue with his story.
“We’ve just flown from the US by private jet and we’re meeting with President Erdogan tomorrow. We’re private, and represent relationships between businessmen in the US and businessmen in Turkey. We all want to see this resolved and expect that it will be tomorrow and when it is we’d like to take you home. So, be ready. You can bring a bag or two with you.”
Neither of us knew what to say. He showed us some pictures on his phone of him with various high-profile people in the US government, and after a few more words, they left.
Norine went to look from the window. “What do you think?” I said.
“If they were trying to keep this a secret it didn’t work. Look.”
The three of them had made it past the police cordon out on the street and walked into a media ambush. Father James in his flowing Franciscan robe attracted most of the attention, but he walked through the reporters with the most beautiful, winsome smile and did not say a word. When they’d finally battled through the crowd and made it into an SUV with government plates, Norine voiced the question I was asking myself. “So, do we pack?”
“I guess.”
BY THE TIME THE FOURTH TRIAL DATE was just days away, nothing had changed. The businessmen had not been able to persuade Erdogan, so we hadn’t gotten on that private jet. Even though I’d promised Norine that I would stay away from news sites, with the trial so close I found it hard to resist. Although the Turkish economy was battered, Erdogan was still refusing to back down. In an address to Turkey’s parliament he had accused me of having “dark ties to terror groups,” and other government officials were openly advocating for my return to prison. The speculation in the media was split. Some were convinced that I was about to be released, while others were adamant that I would soon be back behind bars serving my thirty-five years.
Many sleepless nights I lay in bed and prayed, “I desperately want to return to my children. But if you are not yet finished with what you want to accomplish by my being imprisoned, or by my being sent back to prison, then give me strength, courage, and endurance to be faithful to the end. I am afraid. Oh God, let me go, but if not, help me to be faithful.”
I did not know what would happen. Nobody did. Maybe Erdogan himself did not yet know what he was going to do. But I determined what I would say if they sent me back to prison: “You can defeat me—that is not so difficult to do. But you cannot defeat the Jesus who lives in me.”
THE DAY BEFORE THE HEARING, the chargé d’affaires to Turkey visited, along with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council but acting in his capacity as a USCIRF commissioner. Tony had met with President Trump the day before, and handed us a letter.
Dear Pastor Andrew
We are praying for you, and we are working to bring you home.
Keep the faith. We will win!
God bless you.
Sincerely
Donald Trump
It was a touching gesture, and we both appreciated it greatly.
But that night I still packed two bags.
One to go back to the States.
One to go back to prison.