ICC Note:
Rev. Andrew Brunson, from North Carolina, has worked in Turkey for the last 23 years. The pastor remains in prison under false accusations since December. While it is believed that he has not been tortured, his living conditions are concerning. Reports of religious discrimination of perceived enemies in Turkey seem to have increased within the last year with 46,274 people arrested and another 128,625 people fired from their jobs.
3/10/2017 Turkey (PJ Media) – A North Carolina pastor who made Turkey his home for more than two decades has been sitting behind bars since last year, held for unclear reasons but apparently swept up in President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s engulfing purge of perceived enemies.
Since the failed July coup attempt, Erdoğan’s Islamist government has detained 93,248 people, arrested 46,274, fired 128,625 people of varying professions via government decree, shut down 2,099 schools, fired 7,316 academics, dismissed 4,070 judges and prosecutors, closed 149 media outlets, and imprisoned 162 journalists, as of Feb. 28.
Turkey is officially a secular republic, and about 150,000 Christians live in the country including Armenian and Greek Orthodox, Syriac Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Protestants, Maronites, Chaldeans and Roman Catholics.
 
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