President Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on two senior members of the Turkish government Wednesday, in response to the ongoing detention of an imprisoned American pastor.
“President Trump has made it abundantly clear that the United States expects Turkey to release him immediately,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.
Pastor Andrew Brunson was arrested in 2016 as part of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on political dissidents following a failed coup attempt. Erdogan has suggested that Brunson might be released in exchange for Fethullah Gulen, a cleric leaving in Pennsylvania whom Erdogan accuses of organizing the coup. Brunson’s detention has exacerbated the tensions between the U.S. and Turkey, a key member of the NATO alliance.
“Pastor Brunson’s unjust detention and continued prosecution by Turkish officials is simply unacceptable,” Mnuchin said.
Mnuchin used authorities derived from the Global Magnitsky Act, a piece of legislation that arose out of Russian human rights abuses, to blacklist Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu and Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul.
“These officials serve as leaders of Turkish government organizations responsible for implementing Turkey’s serious human rights abuses,” per the Treasury Department bulletin.
Brunson, a missionary from North Carolina, was moved to house arrest last week, as the United States prepared to host a ministerial on religious freedom at the State Department. Vice President Mike Pence used that event to threaten sanctions on Turkey over his case, which President Trump soon echoed.
“This innocent man of faith should be released immediately!” he tweeted.
Turkey replied defiantly. “Noone dictates Turkey,” Foreign Minister Meal Cavosoglu tweeted. “We will never tolerate threats from anybody. Rule of law is for everyone; no exception.”
That message implies that Brunson is in the hands of an independent judiciary, but Erdogan has undermined that idea by suggesting that the American pastor could be a bargaining chip to obtain Gulen.
“‘Give us the pastor back’, they say. You have one pastor as well. Give him [Gulen] to us,” Erdogan said last year, per Reuters. “Then we will try him [Brunson] and give him to you … The [pastor] we have is on trial. Yours is not — he is living in Pennsylvania. You can give him easily. You can give him right away.”
The State Department dismissed that demand at the time and declined Tuesday to say if the administration believes Turkey has an independent judiciary. “I’m sure you can imagine we would like to bring our people home and get our people out of jail,” spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters. “I will be limited in terms of what I can say about the situation there. It is obviously very delicate.”
