Turkish court orders Pastor Andrew Brunson released; Trump says he should be home soon

This is about the best news we could have ended the week with. This has a January 20, 1980 sort of feel to it – we’ll believe it when the plane touches down on non-hostile territory – but it appears Pastor Andrew Brunson is finally about to come home from his unjust, political captivity in Turkey. A Turkish court has just decided that Brunson’s sentence for “terrorism” will be limited to time served, and that means he should be free to leave the country in short order.

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President Trump expects it to happen quickly:

President Donald Trump on Friday said he hoped U.S. Christian pastor Andrew Brunson would be home safe soon, shortly after a Turkish court ruled to release him after a two-year detention. “My thoughts and prayers are with Pastor Brunson, and we hope to have him safely back home soon,” Trump wrote on Twitter. A Turkish court passed a 3-year and 1-1/2 month sentence on Brunson, who had been charged with terrorism offenses, but said he would not serve any further time because he had already been detained since October 2016.

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Brunson is no more a terrorist than your average five-year-old. What he does is preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and anyone who does that in Turkey instantly becomes a target for an increasingly radical Islamist government led by increasingly despotic president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The charges against Brunson were trumped up from the beginning, as anyone who pays attention to the frequent religious persecution that goes on in Turkey understood. It wasn’t that many years ago that Turkey was America’s most staunch ally in the Middle East, even giving us permission to use its air space for attacks on Iraq during the first Gulf War when the other nations in the region were too afraid to openly side with us against Saddam Hussein. But nearly a generation has passed since then and Turkey has become increasingly radicalized, to the point where it’s extremely dangerous for Americans to operate there – especially if they have any connection to Christian missionary work. We’ll watch this closely to make sure it actually happens, but the news appears good – finally – for Pastor Andrew Brunson. We’re thrilled for him and his family, and grateful to the Trump Administration for staying on this and making sure it finally happened.

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