Calling for the Release of Pastor Andrew Brunson

Floor Speech

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Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, I am coming back to the floor, sadly, to make a speech that I promised to make every week that I am in the U.S. Senate as long as a pastor from North Carolina, who has been in mission in Turkey for almost 20 years--until his release from a Turkish prison.

Before I get started with that, I want to thank Senator Donnelly for his comments because I think we share a common concern with respect to the Joint Strike Fighter Program. That is something I am going to suggest in my discussions.

I also thank, in advance, Senator Shaheen, who has worked with me, on a bipartisan basis, to highlight the concern we have for a man who has been in a Turkish prison for 614 days.

Pastor Brunson was arrested in October of 2016 for nothing more than being a missionary. I went to Turkey about 2 months ago and visited him in a Turkish prison, after almost 17 months of being in prison, without any charges. They brought charges against him that are some of the most bogus excuses for evidence you could possibly imagine. I am certain that if it were somebody with these charges in the United States in a jail system or prison system, they would be released the day the charges were filed.

This is Pastor Brunson. He is a little over 50 years old. Since he has been in prison, he has lost 50 pounds and has spent almost 17 months in a prison cell designed for 8 people that had 21 people in it, that entire time without a single formal charge levied against him.

Pastor Brunson is a Presbyterian minister from Western North Carolina, an area called Black Mountain. He was swept up in the arrest that occurred after the illegal coup attempt that I think was inappropriate and that I would probably oppose because I think there is a peaceful way to change regimes, but Pastor Brunson wasn't one of the people who caused the coup. If you went to that courtroom like I did and spent 12 hours in that room, you would have heard absurd charges from over a dozen secret witnesses, many of them in prison, talking about the food that somebody may have eaten, which is a preferred food of a terrorist organization, or the fact that a light was on in a small church in Izmir for hours, and certainly there had to be something bad going on.

That is the nature of these charges. I am not making it up. This man is doing everything he can to have the truth be heard, but I actually believe this is not about a judicial process. This is not about valid charges. This is about a political hostage.

I will tell you the day I absolutely confirmed that this pastor became a political hostage. It is the day President Erdogan had the audacity to make this statement. President Erdogan believes that there is someone in this country who was involved in the coup attempt. We have reached out to Turkey and said: If you can process a valid basis for extradition--we have an extradition treaty with Turkey--we would be happy to consider that, based on the merits of the case, and we still would be, but the President had the audacity to say: We can just short circuit all of those by you trading your pastor for our pastor. President Erdogan clearly demonstrated that he has the authority to release this illegally and improperly imprisoned American, who has been in prison for 614 days, but he chooses not to.

Now, on a bipartisan basis--I should tell my colleagues that one of the reasons I find this so insulting is because Turkey has been a NATO ally since 1952. We have to understand what being a NATO ally means. What it means is the greatest, the most powerful Nation on Earth has committed to deploying men and women in American uniforms to Turkey to protect Turkey if they are attacked by an outside aggressor. We have a commitment to protect the Turkish people. We have a commitment to our men and women in harm's way to protect the Turkish people, but we have a Turkish President who is acting less like a NATO ally and more like an adversary.

By the way, this is not an argument with the Turkish people who are great people. I have been to Turkey several times--they are wonderful people--but this President is taking a position that has to have a consequence.

Again, we can go back and talk about what our obligations are under the treaty. First and foremost, it is to treat an ally that has that very heavy obligation to defend another Nation--to go to some other soil and defend that Nation--to treat them with respect, to treat their citizens with respect. If they are a criminal, present the evidence and prosecute them.

There are Americans in Turkish prisons. They have committed murders, robbery, and other crimes, and there was legitimate evidence put forth for me to be OK with that, but I am not at all OK with the way Pastor Brunson has been treated by the Turkish judiciary.

We tried everything we could for about 1\1/2\ years on a diplomatic basis and that has gone nowhere. After my last trip to Turkey, I decided we had to get Turkey's attention, and on a bipartisan basis, we started that by passing an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act that will ask for the answers to very important questions. Some of those have to do with the illegal detainment of American persons in Turkey. The other one has to do with a very important--in fact, the most sophisticated tactical fighter that has ever flown through the air, the Joint Strike Fighter, or the F-35.

Turkey is a very important part of the supply chain to the Joint Strike Fighter and Turkey has requested Joint Strike Fighters to be put into their arsenal. On the surface, because they are a NATO ally, I don't object to it, but, today, I strongly object to it.

We passed language in the national defense authorization that we will be voting on fairly soon that will actually put Turkey on notice: Choose what you want to be. Do you want to be an ally that treats your other ally citizens with respect; do you want to be an ally that actually builds defense systems that come from allies, not from a would-be adversary like Russia; or do you want to actually go down the path and lose the support of the American people along the way?

I thank Chairman Inhofe for his support of the amendment. I want to thank the members of the Senate subcommittee--the Senate full Committee on Armed Services who voted for this amendment. I look forward to getting this passed into law when we finally confer with the House and sending a message to Turkey: We want to be your ally. We want to be there in your darkest hour to defend your security. Convince Members of the Senate that you want to be our ally, that you want to treat our citizens with respect, and that you will free Pastor Brunson.

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