“I am an innocent man. I love Jesus. I love Turkey,” Brunson had said in his last remarks to the court in his defense before the verdict came out. “This is the day our family has been praying for – I am delighted to be on my way home to the United States,” he said in a statement after his release. The latest defense policy bill for the 2019 Fiscal Year, also known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which President Donald Trump signed into law in August 2018, specifically name-checks Brunson as a reason for telling the Pentagon that it cannot facilitate the delivery of F-35s until various conditions are met. By the end of the year, by law, Secretary of Defense Mattis has to submit a report detailing the potential risks posed by Turkey’s plans to operate the stealth fighters alongside the S-400 surface-to-air missile system, as well as potential threats to other military systems the U.S. supplies to the Turkish government.

The review must also include an assessment of what would happen if Turkey, which produces a significant number of components for F-35s, were to get kicked out of the Joint Strike Fighter program. Lastly, Congress wants the Pentagon to draw up a list of alternatives to the S-400 that the United States or other NATO members could offer to the Turkish military, despite repeated failures to pitch a Western system so far. But Brunson’s release is unlikely to change this situation. The U.S. and Turkish governments reportedly reached a deal that would see the pastor released from prison in exchange for the relaxing of various economic sanctions, including those that have sent Turkey’s national currency, the Lira, plummeting in value.

Brunson is “just one of many Americans, U.S. State Department employees, and Western nationals that that [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan continues to hold hostage,” Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Oct. 12, 2018. “There is still work to be done and President Erdoğan has a long way to go before acting like the NATO ally we expect him to be.” It’s not entirely clear who Sasse might be referring to, but the NDAA also specifically mentions Serkan Golge. A scientist who had worked with NASA and who became a U.S. citizen in 2010, Golge also got arrested in the post-coup period in 2016 for links to Islamic cleric and former Turkish political figure Fethullah Gülen. President Erdoğan has declared Gülen, a former political ally who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, to be the mastermind behind the abortive push to unseat him and has sought his extradition. The U.S. government says it has not received enough evidence to support the charges against him. It has long appeared that Brunson and Golge were to be bargaining chips to exchange for Gülen.

Ralf Hirschberger/Picture-Alliance/DPA/AP Images Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

U.S.-Turkey ties are still cold over the U.S. government’s support for Kurdish forces in Syria, which the Turkish government sees as a direct threat to its own regional interests. There is also the matter of an entirely unfounded conspiracy theory that says the United States, or at least senior officials, were among those behind the 2016 coup attempt. In August 2018, this prompted a group of activist lawyers tied to Erdoğan to demand the Turkish government arrest various U.S. military personnel and conduct a raid on the American portions of Incirlik Air Base to search for more evidence. So far, there is no indication that any law enforcement organization in the country has responded to those calls for action. None of these political machinations get to the core issue of concerns about whether the Russians could obtain sensitive information about the F-35 via selling the S-400s to Turkey and then having to train Turkish forces in their operation. Other members of NATO have also criticized the plan since the Russian surface-to-air missile systems do not meet the Alliances various standards and requirements for interoperability between member states.

Vitaly Kuzmin A transporter-erector-launcher associated with Russia's S-400 surface-to-air missile system.