Who is Andrew Brunson?

The 25-odd members of US pastor Andrew Brunson’s congregation in the Turkish city Izmir could never have predicted that he would one day be at the heart of a global row.

Brunson lived a quiet life after moving to the ancient port city on Turkey’s Aegean coast 23 years ago with his wife, Norine, and three children, to work as missionaries with the Associated Reform Presbyterian Church.

Yet the North Carolina-born pastor, 50, is now a household name among the US evangelical Right, after becoming the focus of “an international diplomatic and economic crisis which has seen Turkey’s currency go into freefall and led its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to accuse the US of trying to stab his country in the back”, reports The Guardian.

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So what happened?

The row dates back to October 2016, when Brunson was one of thousands of people detained in mass arrests following a failed coup against President Erdogan.

The American was connected to the Gulen movement, which the Turkish blames for the coup attempt, a claim that Brunson denied in court. “The disciples of Jesus suffered in his name, now it is my turn. I am an innocent man on all these charges. I reject them. I know why I am here. I am here to suffer in Jesus’s name,” he told the courtroom in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

Nonetheless, he was indicted on espionage charges and links to terrorist organisations. As his trial drags on, Brunson has now been held for more than 18 months, first in prison before being moved to house arrest last month, on grounds of ill health.

The case has made him a martyr in the eyes of US evangelicals including Vice President Mike Pence, who said last month that Turkey should release Brunson or “face the consequences”, The Guardian reports.

Brunson has also received presidential backing. Donald Trump has declared him a “fine gentleman and Christian leader” who is being “persecuted in Turkey for no reason”.

In a bid to get the pastor back on US soil, Washington initially attempted to cut a deal with Turkey, with the Trump administration “dissuading Congress from immediate sanctions, and the Justice Department deciding not to press charges against 11 of the 15 of Mr Erdogan’s bodyguards, who were filmed beating up protesters in Washington DC last year”, according to The Daily Telegraph.

However, when Erdogan then attempted to use Brunson as a bargaining chip, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned that “significant sanctions” might be imposed against Turkey, says The Guardian.

The US followed through on that warning last week, when it doubled steel and aluminium tariffs, exacerbating Turkey’s existing economic crisis.

In a tweet on Friday, Trump said the Turkish lira was weak against “our very strong dollar”, adding that “US relations with Turkey are not good at this time”.

On Sunday, Turkey’s currency hit a record low of 7.23 lira per dollar, but Erdogan insists he will not give way to US pressure.

In an article for The New York Times, the Turkish president wrote: “Unless the United States starts respecting Turkey’s sovereignty and proves that it understands the dangers that our nation faces, our partnership could be in jeopardy.”