Source: World Watch Monitor, September 29, 2017<\/p>\n
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has for the first time confirmed publicly that a U.S. pastor jailed in Turkey for the past 12 months is being held by his government as a political hostage.<\/p>\n
In a speech at his presidential palace [on September 28], Erdo\u011fan openly called on the United States to exchange Pastor Andrew Brunson for Muslim cleric Fethullah G\u00fclen, a Turkish citizen living in exile in the U.S. since 1999, who is accused of masterminding last year\u2019s failed coup.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The U.S.] says, \u2018Give us the pastor back,\u2019\u201d Erdo\u011fan said. \u201cYou have one pastor [of ours] as well. The pastor we have [Brunson] is on trial. Yours [G\u00fclen] is not\u2014he is living in Pennsylvania. Give him to us. You can easily give him to us. You can give him right away. Then we will try him [Brunson] and give him to you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Turkey has launched a massive internal crackdown over the past 15 months to identify and punish the FETO (Fethullah Terror Organisation) network accused of infiltrating Turkey\u2019s armed forces and government. More than 50,000 \u201csuspected\u201d judges, prosecutors, soldiers, academics, journalists, human rights activists, and police officers have been jailed, held for months in pre-trial detention.<\/p>\n
Since October 7, 2016, Andrew Brunson has been one of these prisoners.<\/p>\n
\u00bb Read full article<\/a> (or a related story from Reuters<\/a>) to better understand the dynamics at play. Please pray for Brunson and his family as the anniversary of his imprisonment approaches.<\/p>\n \u00bb Check out the latest edition of EMQ Online<\/a> for an article about a movement that bears G\u00fclen\u2019s name. This group has been quite active in the U.S., running a network of charter schools<\/a>, interfaith dialogue groups, and cultural centers. The article focuses on ways to engage followers with the gospel (subscription required).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: World Watch Monitor, September 29, 2017 Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan has for the first time confirmed publicly that a U.S. pastor jailed in Turkey for the past 12 months is being held by his government as a political hostage. In a speech at his presidential palace [on September 28], Erdo\u011fan openly called on … Continue reading TURKEY: Andrew Brunson, Political Hostage<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7444,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7443\/revisions\/7444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}