Andrew Craig Brunson (3 January 1968-) was an American Presbyterian pastor who was imprisoned in Turkey from October 2016 to 12 October 2018.
Biography[]
Andrew Brunson was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina on 3 January 1968, and he became a Presbyterian pastor. He went on to serve as pastor at the Izmir Resurrection Church (held in a tenement building) from the 1990s to 2016; on 7 October 2016, he was arrested during Recep Tayyip Erdogan's purges following the 2016 Turkish coup attempt. On 28 September 2017, Erdogan unsuccessfully attempted to exchange Brunson for Fethullah Gulen, an influential opponent of the AKP regime, and President Donald Trump retaliated against Turkey with sanctions. On 12 October 2018, Brunson was found guilty of aiding terrorism, but he was sentenced to time served and returned to America, where he wrote a memoir. On 24 August 2020, he appeared in a video aired at the Republican National Convention, where he praised Trump.