On October 7, 2016, U.S. nationals Pastor Andrew Brunson and his wife Norine Brunson were summoned by a local police station in the western Turkish province of Izmir to discuss their applications for a residence permit renewal. The couple had been living in Turkey for more than 20 years. The pastor, a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, had been working at the Izmir Resurrection Church. After being kept at the center for 13 days, in isolation and without access to an attorney or consular services, Turkish authorities formally detained the pastor. While his wife was released without any explanation, Brunson was transferred to a high-security migration management center in Izmir.

The legal process followed for Brunson’s case is testament to the pitfalls of Turkey’s “state of emergency” provisions, which bestow upon the authorities broad powers to carry out arbitrary police searches and detentions. Brunson did not appear before a judge for nearly two months after his detention. Until then, he was held in solitary confinement and repeatedly denied U.S. consular services, or even any legal counsel. Finally, on December 9, a judge formally accused Brunson of “membership in an armed terrorist organization,” and the pastor was transferred to Izmir’s maximum-security prison. The hearing marked the first time Brunson met with a lawyer.

Under the state of emergency, Brunson can be subjected to pre-trial detention of up to seven years, with no access to his case files and no attorney-client privileges. The evidence, the court said, rested on the testimony of secret witnesses, with no possibility of an effective cross-examination by Brunson’s lawyer.

The exact charges against Brunson, meanwhile, remain imprecise and multi-faceted. He appears to be accused of both inciting Turkey’s Kurdish citizens against the state and of plotting the July 2016 coup with the Gulen network – a faction historically opposed to Kurdish political movements.

In May 2017, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reported that the pastor was charged with delivering religious sermons to Kurdish citizens “with a special purpose.” In his defense, Brunson stated that he did not speak Kurdish and that he delivered sermons to all kinds of people, including Kurds. In August, however, fresh charges were added to the Brunson case, accusing the pastor of “gathering state secrets for espionage, attempting to overthrow the Turkish parliament and government, and to change the constitutional order” – a clear reference to the July coup attempt.

While prosecutors only released Brunson’s indictment to the pastor’s lawyers in March 2018, just weeks before Brunson’s first court hearing, Turkey’s pro-government media had published myriad stories throughout 2017 speculating on Brunson’s possible offenses against the Turkish state and his alleged links to the Gulenist network. These reports offered little evidence, instead systematically promoted a conspiratorial smear campaign against the pastor, portraying him as an agent of broader conspiracies attributed to the United States.

The Turkish daily Takvim – owned by the Turkuvaz media company, which includes President Erdogan’s son-in-law and his son-in-law’s brother as board members – claimed in a May 2017 article that Brunson is a CIA agent and was personally involved in the July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey, adding that he would have been made director of the CIA if the coup had succeeded. The same month, Turkey’s largest pro-government daily, Sabah, also owned by Turkuvaz, reported that an anonymous witness claimed the pastor’s church was engaged in efforts to incorporate Kurds into Christianity as the “thirteenth lost tribe.” In September, following an unsuccessful bomb attack against a shuttle bus carrying prison guards to the prison where Brunson is being held, Takvim published a story titled “The Pastor’s Bomb,” referring to the pastor as a “CIA agent,” and implying that the attack was “a message from the CIA.”

Brunson was actually the second American to be jailed after the coup attempt. The first was a Turkish-American dual citizen, Serkan Golge, who was a physicist studying the effects of radiation for NASA’s Mars program at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas. While on summer vacation with his family in southern Turkey, Golge was detained in August 2016, only weeks after the coup attempt. Like Brunson, he was accused of membership in a terrorist organization, as well as espionage. The only evidence the court produced against him was a $1 bill found in Golge’s parents’ house. (Turkish authorities claim that Gulen handed out a specific series of $1 bills to his followers to designate their rank within the movement.) In early February, Golge was tried and sentenced to a seven-and-a-half-year prison term. He continues to be held in a prison in the southern Turkish province of Hatay. Because Turkey treats detained dual citizens as Turkish citizens only, Golge was denied any U.S. consular access – a move the United States failed to dispute for months.

In August 2016, Turkish authorities also detained American academic Clyde Forsberg, who was teaching at Turkey’s Karabuk University. Forsberg was accused of “aiding and abetting terrorism,” and providing assistance to the Gulen network. He was released after appearing in court five days after his detention. But Forsberg feared further action against him, citing the publication of his court appearance, along with his full name and citizenship, by local newspapers. He was immediately dismissed from the university upon his release, and he left Turkey shortly after.

Meanwhile, in October 2016, Ryan Keating, an American PhD student and aid worker, was detained as he was trying to enter Turkey and deported from the country. Keating, who had been living in Turkey for more than two decades, had set up a relief organization in partnership with the Kurtulus Church in Ankara, one of Turkey’s largest evangelical churches, to support refugees in the Turkish capital. Keating was labeled “a threat to national security” and banned from entering Turkey. Other Protestants, such as Patrick Jansen, a church leader who had been based in Gaziantep, were barred from the country.

Turkey’s main opposition challenged the cases against these Americans at the Turkish parliament on multiple occasions. On November 4, 2016, Selina Dogan, an Istanbul deputy from the Republican People’s Party (CHP), submitted a parliamentary question regarding the deportations of Keating and Jansen, and the ongoing detainment of Andrew Brunson, then-awaiting deportation. The question referred to claims that the individuals were deported solely for being American citizens, as a response to the U.S.’s refusal to extradite Gulen to Turkey. Dogan asked the minister of interior exactly how many foreign clergymen had been deported since the attempted coup, and questioned whether they threatened national security. The government never issued a response.

Four days later, on November 8, CHP Izmir Deputy Zeynep Altiok also submitted a parliamentary question about the charges against Brunson, the validity of the evidence, the identities of the officials preventing Brunson from seeing his attorney, and more. Altiok pointed to the claim that more than 100 Protestant clergymen had been deported from Turkey since 2012, asking the minister of interior whether the Protestants were being systematically targeted. The government, once again, never responded.

All four Americans – the pastor, the physicist, the academic, and the aid worker – were ultimately accused of threatening national security. But Ankara’s post-coup purges also targeted Turkish workers of U.S. consular missions.

On February 23, 2017, Turkish counterterrorism police detained Hamza Ulucay, a Turkish employee of the U.S. Consulate in the southern province of Adana, home to the U.S.-Turkish Incirlik airbase used by the anti-Islamic State coalition for military operations in Syria. Ulucay had worked for the consulate as a translator for 36 years before his detention. Although he was initially released from custody on probation, he was detained for a second time on March 7, after a prosecutor objected to his release. A court later ordered his formal arrest on charges of “membership in a terrorist organization” after authorities found $1 bills at his residence.

Metin Topuz, another Turkish citizen and employee of the U.S. diplomatic staff in Turkey, was detained on October 4, 2017. Topuz, who worked for the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul, was accused of espionage and working to destroy Turkey’s constitutional order, another reference to the coup attempt. He was accused of being a Gulenist due to his alleged contact with a former Turkish prosecutor and former police chiefs with links to the U.S.-based cleric. Washington issued a statement noting that Topuz was a liaison for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and had contacted many Turkish officials over the years as part of his duties.

Turkish authorities targeted a third consular employee, Mete Canturk, only days after the arrest of Topuz. After raiding Canturk’s Istanbul home, the police visited Canturk’s wife in her family’s residence in the province of Amasya, detaining her and the couple’s daughter, both accused of membership in the Gulen network. After being detained for more than a week, the two were released ahead of a State Department delegation visit to Turkey.

At this point, Washington appeared to be losing patience with Ankara. Within four days of Metin Topuz’s arrest, on October 8, U.S. authorities suspended all nonimmigrant visa services at its diplomatic facilities in Turkey. The next day, Ambassador John Bass – whose service in Turkey was coming to an end – issued a press release, stating that Topuz’s arrest had “raised questions” about “whether the goal of some [Turkish] officials is to disrupt the long-standing cooperation between Turkey and the United States,” adding that U.S. officials were “not sure” whether the detentions were isolated incidents. Bass condemned the so-called “leaks” from Turkish officials to pro-government media outlets regarding allegations against Topuz as “disturbing,” echoing the consulate’s statement that called the leaks an “attempt to try Topuz in the media rather than a court of law.”

The Turkish embassy in Washington soon retaliated by suspending its own visa services for American citizens. At home, Erdogan made every effort to pin the blame for the visa crisis on the outgoing ambassador. Erdogan publicly urged Washington to recall Bass, declaring that Ankara no longer considered him a legitimate envoy. The State Department, however, dismissed all such allegations, stating that Bass’s decision had been made with the full coordination of Foggy Bottom, the White House, and the National Security Council.

On October 16, a U.S. delegation, chaired by Assistant Secretary of State Jonathan Cohen, travelled to Ankara to resolve the crisis. Following a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Turkey said that the talks were going in a “good direction.”

Weeks later, on November 6, the United States declared its partial resumption of visa services in Turkey, adding that it had obtained assurances from Ankara about the safety of U.S. consular staff at its missions. Turkey again matched the U.S. move and resumed visa services, but denied that any assurances were made, signaling that the crisis was far from over.

The next day, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim travelled to Washington to discuss a variety of issues, including the visa crisis and the release of the consulate employees. But after working-level meetings failed to yield results, Yildirim’s scheduled meeting with Vice President Mike Pence was pushed back by two days. The two sides could not even produce matching statements after their meeting on November 9, with Yildirim calling the talks “very fruitful” and the White House emphasizing its “deep concern” over the arrests in Turkey.

The crisis ultimately came to a “resolution” on December 28. While Ulucay and Topuz remain behind bars (and Canturk remains under house arrest), both countries announced a full resumption of visa services. Washington noted that the Turkish government had adhered to “assurances” given earlier, adding that there were no additional embassy employees under investigation, that local staff “would not be detained or arrested for performing their official duties,” and that Turkish authorities had agreed to inform the U.S. if they intended to detain or arrest any members of the American missions in Turkey.

The Turkish Embassy in Washington, however, again denied any “assurances concerning the ongoing judicial processes,” adding that foreign mission personnel were not investigated for performing their official duties. “It is inappropriate to misinform the Turkish and American public that such assurances were provided,” the statement read. As if to underscore this, in January 2018, U.S. consulate employee Canturk was asked not to leave his house as part of an “effective house arrest.”

Meanwhile, in a November congressional hearing in Washington, Brunson’s American attorney CeCe Heil described Brunson’s condition to U.S. legislators. The pastor was unable to sleep and had lost over 50 pounds due to stress, Heil said. They still had no access to evidence since his file was sealed, she explained, adding that they had learned of an alleged secret witness whose testimony provided the basis for the charges. If Turkey had any evidence against him, she asserted, they would have revealed it and charged him by now. In a Senate briefing on November 14, Sandra Jolley, the vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), described her recent visit to Brunson and the conditions of his confinement. Brunson has been given no due process, she argued, adding that the pastor was convinced that even if he were tried, the court proceedings would be a sham. Jolley described Erdogan’s statements suggesting a trade between the pastor and Gulen as explicitly revealing the Turkish president’s intentions in holding Brunson hostage.