[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 80 (Wednesday, May 16, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2687-S2688]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



            Calling for the Release of Pastor Andrew Brunson

  Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, this is my third occasion on a speech that 
I wish that I didn't have to give on the floor of the U.S. Senate, but 
I promise that I am going to give a speech on this subject every week 
that the Senate is open for as long as I am a U.S. Senator and there is 
a man in a Turkish prison who I don't believe should be.
  This man's name is Andrew Brunson, Pastor Brunson. He is a 
Presbyterian minister from Black Mountain, NC, who has been in Turkey 
for about the last 20 years with his wife. He raised his family there. 
He is a Presbyterian minister who at first just did ministry work. He 
didn't have a church to actually open up to the community. He just did 
ministry work--preached the Word and delivered the Word for the people 
in Turkey who wanted to hear it. It was a small church with only about 
50 full-time members. It was a church that was just outside of Izmir. 
It was actually in Izmir proper, which is one of the larger cities in 
Turkey.
  As of today, this man has been in prison for 586 days. He was 
actually taken to prison, without charges, under the emergency order 
after the coup in 2016. He was put in prison on October 4, 2016. For 
almost 17 months, he was held in a prison cell that was designed for 8 
prisoners but had 21 in it. None of the other ones were American. None 
of the other ones were English speaking. Many of them were charged on 
either ISIS or terrorist charges or for plotting a coup attempt. He was 
in that prison for almost 17 months. He lost 50 pounds. His health 
diminished. His mental state, as anyone would expect, diminished. Yet 
he is a strong man of faith, and hopefully he will continue to have the 
strength to go through this horrible process.
  We have been handling this. We have what we call casework. If 
somebody in North Carolina needs help, whatever that may be, we 
encourage them to call our office, and we open a case. We do any number 
of things for veterans, for military families, for seniors--anybody. If 
you need help in getting through to the Federal Government, you call 
our office. So we opened a case on Pastor Brunson about a year ago, and 
we have been trying to work through diplomatic channels to get him 
released.
  About 3 months ago or 4 months ago, we heard that the indictment was 
going to be served on Pastor Brunson. I received word from some of the 
family members and people in the faith-based community that they were 
concerned that the American people were going to read the indictment 
and really judge him as guilty and turn their backs on him and have him 
languish in prison for what would be, essentially, a life sentence. He 
is 50 years old, and the charges would be up to 35 years.
  It was so important for me to have him know that we cared about him 
that I traveled to Turkey. I got a visa to go to Turkey and made a 
request to go to that Turkish prison and look Pastor Brunson eye to eye 
and tell him that we were not going to forget about him and that we 
were going to do everything we could to work for his release and the 
release of a number of other people who I genuinely believe, in Turkey, 
are subject to religious persecution.
  I met with him in the prison for about an hour and a half. It turns 
out

[[Page S2688]]

that we had just found out that his first court date was going to be 
about 3 weeks later, so I decided to go back to Turkey 3 weeks later 
and be in that courtroom to hear the testimony for myself, to hear the 
62-page indictment play out. I was in that courtroom from about 9 
o'clock in the morning on Monday until about 10 o'clock that night. If 
you don't know what a kangaroo court is and you can't read it on this 
slide, just Google it quickly, because what I saw was a kangaroo court.
  First off, you should think about the setting. It is unlike any 
setting you could ever imagine in the United States. It doesn't have a 
trial jury, but it has a three-judge panel up there, and the prosecutor 
is really elevated to almost being another judge. The prosecutor was up 
at the dais. We were in a room that was about half the size of this 
room. It was maybe about two-thirds the size. It was a big room. The 
defense attorney was off to the side about another 30 or 40 feet, and 
the defendant was right in front of this panel of judges and was being 
looked down upon. He had to testify for 6 hours on his own behalf. One 
doesn't have a choice in Turkey. Then they listed the charges.
  Why do I say it was a kangaroo court? Let me give a summary. I am not 
going to cover all of the charges because my time is limited today, but 
let me give a summary of some of the charges.
  In the time I was there, there were about a half dozen secret 
witnesses. The defendant didn't get to face his accusers. In Turkey, 
these secret witnesses can say what they want to say. The essence of 
one secret witness's testimony was that he knew that Pastor Brunson was 
involved in either plotting the coup or in working with the PKK, which 
is a terrorist organization fundamentally made up of Kurds, because he 
witnessed a light on in this church for 4 hours.
  First off, in the U.S. system, I know you are probably not going to 
get prosecuted for 35 years for having a light on for 4 hours--at least 
I hope not. Yet what makes this even more challenging is that this is 
the church. This church only seats about 120 people. It has two very 
small upstairs' rooms. I know because I have been there. We took these 
pictures when I visited Turkey after the visit to the prison. This is 
the room that is alleged to have had a light on for 4 hours, but there 
is one problem--no window, no way to possibly see into this room. In 
fact, the windows downstairs are closed with storm--I am trying to 
think of the name--shutters, wooden shutters. There is no way you could 
even see in. Yet this witness had what they considered to be compelling 
testimony that a light had been on, and for that reason, the pastor had 
to have been involved in the terrorist plot or the coup.
  Another of the charges that have been alleged by the prosecution is 
that all of the churches in America are connected and that they 
actually work in unison in other countries to disrupt the governments 
of other countries. A Christian church may take the Word to people in 
other countries, but it is really kind of organized as an intelligence-
gathering and destabilizing force on behalf of the American Government 
in order to disrupt other sovereign nations.
  Literally, this is how they have been thinking, and this is what they 
have been using to prosecute him. It is a kangaroo court.
  I maintain that what we have is a hostage situation here. We have 
President Erdogan saying: If we give him a pass, give us somebody we 
are trying to extradite from the United States. On the one hand, they 
say you have to work through the system, and we have to let justice be 
served. On the other hand, the President has said: If you give us 
somebody we are trying to extradite from the United States, then we 
will give you Pastor Brunson. This is a hostage situation. This is 
religious persecution.
  I will finish with this. Turkey is a NATO ally. It is an important 
NATO ally. It has been in NATO since 1952. It is in a very dangerous 
part of the world. It has a lot of challenges that it has to deal 
with--the Syrian conflict and its own internal economic challenges. 
There are a number of challenges, and I understand that President 
Erdogan's job is difficult. I would like to make it easier. As a co-
lead of the Senate's NATO Observer Group, I would like to actually 
strengthen our partnership and make safer and more secure its homeland 
and its threat from foreign adversaries.
  Yet, today, I have a NATO ally that is behaving like no NATO ally 
ever has in the history of the alliance. These are the sorts of things 
we are supposed to be doing as members of the NATO alliance, not 
illegally imprisoning for 586 days a Presbyterian minister.
  We will be doing the NDAA markup next week, which is the National 
Defense Authorization Act. I will be working with other Members and 
will have to put forth provisions in the NDAA, which is the last thing 
that I would like to do. I would like to put provisions forward that 
strengthen the alliance with NATO, that send a very clear signal that 
we want to help them secure their homeland, and that send a clear 
signal that we want to work together in the fight in Syria. But today I 
can't have that as a priority. Today my No. 1 priority is releasing 
Pastor Brunson. I hope everybody understands that this is something 
that everybody--whether you are from North Carolina, North Dakota, or 
any State in this Nation--should all stand as a nation saying: This is 
not how you treat an American citizen and certainly not a NATO ally.

  I look forward, hopefully, to never doing this speech again. I hope 
that by next week Pastor Brunson is free and that we sent a very clear 
message to all the other people in Turkey who are in prison because of 
their faith that this is unacceptable behavior.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.