https://world.wng.org/2018/07/the_brunson_farce   
      
   The Brunson farce   
      
   Turkey’s indictment against American Pastor Andrew Brunson reveals why   
   charges against him shouldn’t hold up in any legitimate court   
      
   by Aykan Erdemir, Merve Tahiroglu    Post Date: July 17, 2018    
      
   PICTURE: Turkish soldiers stand guard at the entrance of the Aliaga court and   
   prison complex during the May trial of U.S. Pastor Andrew Brunson. (BULENT   
   KILIC/AFP/Getty Images)    
      
   On Wednesday American pastor Andrew Brunson—unjustly detained in a Turkish   
   prison for almost 20 months—will appear in court. Turkish judges refused to   
   release him after his previous two hearings on April 16 and May 7.   
      
   The 62-page indictment against Brunson, a muddled collection of conspiracy   
   theories spinning mundane details of the pastor’s life into terrorist acts,   
   was unsealed only a month before the first hearing. In the indictment, the   
   Turkish prosecutor relies    
   on ludicrous accusations from three secret witnesses and a convicted murderer   
   to allege that the pastor carried out felonies on behalf of two terrorist   
   organizations as well as military espionage.   
      
   Here are 12 outrageous accusations the Turkish court leveled against Brunson   
   in the most absurd court case in the country’s history.   
      
   1. Brunson’s daughter sent him a video of maqluba, a traditional Arab dish   
   of rice, meat, and vegetables cooked in a pot, which is then flipped upside   
   down. The prosecutor argues that this is the signature dish of a terrorist   
   organization in Turkey,    
   consumed frequently in their safe houses, and is proof of Brunson’s link to   
   a terrorist cell.   
      
   2. Brunson received a text message from one of his church members informing   
   the pastor that he could not make it to worship due to diarrhea. The   
   prosecutor fails to explain how this implicates Brunson.   
      
   3. Brunson appears in a photo with a man with a yellow, red, and green scarf.   
   The prosecutor interprets the presence of the Kurdish national tricolor in the   
   photo as proof of the pastor’s link to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK),   
   a designated    
   terrorist group in Turkey. He argues it “could be evaluated as involvement   
   in illegal activity under the guise of missionary work.”   
      
   4. A secret witness reports seeing Brunson at a “brain washing activity”   
   held in a hotel where “there were 25 Turkish college students making vows   
   alongside the American national anthem, with their right hands on the left   
   side of their chests.”    
   The prosecutor presents this as an “activity against the security of our   
   country.”   
      
   5. A secret witness accuses Brunson of publishing Bibles in the Kurdish   
   language. The prosecutor fails to explain why this is illegal.   
      
   6. The prosecutor argues that Brunson’s “insistence to be present” in   
   the historical Sur district of the city of Diyarbakir in Turkey’s southeast   
   “despite the chaos in the region” leads him to infer that “the suspect   
   fulfills duties in    
   accordance with the goals and strategy of the illegal organization to which he   
   is linked.”   
      
   7. A secret witness claims that Brunson was “part of an operation in which   
   [Kurdish] families wrote letters to the Canadian government to seek asylum   
   there, leveling harsh critiques against the AKP [Turkey’s ruling Islamist   
   party] and the MHP [AKP’   
   s ultra-nationalist partner].” The witness presents this as part of a scheme   
   in which “PKK members would pretend to convert to Christianity and use the   
   church to flee the country by seeking asylum abroad.”   
      
   8. A secret witness reports that Brunson met with a lawyer to discuss how to   
   establish churches in Turkey, not a criminal offense even under Turkey’s   
   draconian state-of-emergency measures, while also noting, “Opening churches   
   became fashionable    
   during that time.”   
      
   9. Brunson contacted Amnesty International’s Turkey director, who is also an   
   attorney, nine times to inquire about his residency permit. Although it is not   
   a crime to retain a lawyer in Turkey, this attorney was later imprisoned on   
   terrorism charges,    
   and hence any prior contact with him is now retrospectively a criminal act.   
      
   10. A witness, who admits to being convicted of murder and escaping from   
   prison, claims that he heard from an “Israeli missionary” that Brunson had   
   joined a meeting at an Istanbul convention center in March 2013, where   
   attendees planned what would    
   later become the Gezi Park protests, a nationwide demonstration over the   
   government’s razing of trees in May 2013.   
      
   11. Brunson has allegedly been in contact with volunteers of the Church of   
   Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A secret witness argues that this is   
   suspicious, since he also claims that “English teachers at Turkey’s   
   military high schools have been    
   members of the LDS church since the 1990s,” and that Mormons are “strongly   
   influential in the U.S. Army, the CIA, and the NSA” and “make up 40   
   percent of U.S. military personnel serving in foreign countries.”   
      
   12. Brunson’s alleged contact with the LDS church is presented as criminal   
   since a secret witness claims that the gang of Mormon English teachers   
   mentioned above all have the same identifying feature: a missing finger, but   
   each one has a different    
   finger missing.   
      
   Ahead of Brunson’s Wednesday court appearance, rumors have swirled of a   
   suspected deal between the Trump administration and Turkey’s President Recep   
   Tayyip Erdogan. But Turkey’s formal indictment makes clear Brunson deserves   
   to be free not because    
   of a deal, but because there isn’t a shred of evidence against him.   
      
   ---   
   Aykan Erdemir is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies   
   and a former member of the Turkish Parliament. Merve Tahiroglu is a research   
   analyst focusing on Turkey at the foundation.   
      
   Aykan Erdemir   
   Merve Tahiroglu   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)