Saving Private Brunson

The values the US has put into play and spent in the name of saving Pastor Brunson in its relations with Turkey recall the situation in the famous film in which almost an entire army is sacrificed in the name of "Saving Private Ryan." The meaning America has loaded onto Pastor Brunson is evidently far greater than supposed. So much so that all claims about law, all interests concerning international relations, the alliances in NATO, the strategic cooperations in the Middle East and other historical relations are being put into play for his sake, all at once. It does not even concern them that a series of dark relationships is being exposed on his account.

In fact, from whichever side you look, there is a very great gulf between the political mind and callowness the US has displayed recently and the scientific, political, historical and political accumulation that has made America the number one country in the world in many fields.

America is a country that has the world's largest and best universities and houses within itself the most important scientists, technical people, experts, and accumulation of intellect and knowledge in their fields. This accumulation is reflected in its administration in every subject and makes it world number one in many fields. In truth, what has carried America to this level has been, to a great extent, the political mind that supported this development, pioneered it, and was able to plan and implement it. However, these days the distance between the politics governing America and what it has produced from the past to the present is widening a little more with each passing day.

The reactions the US administration has displayed on the occasion of the Brunson case are not the behaviors that could be expected from a state of US stature. Though we are sure that this situation is also seen, and met with the same bewilderment, by some people in the US administration who know and follow what is reasonable. In fact, even though Turkey-US relations get caught up in such zigzags from time to time owing to the different approaches and quests of some administrators, they must be continually re-evaluated on the basis of the more objective interest relations on which they rest.

Of course, Turkey is no longer a country that any US administration can govern as it wishes. There is a Turkey with a much stronger and more independent character, both economically and socially and in terms of political will. If the US is thinking of and looking after its own interests, it should, knowing this, resort to no path other than approaching Turkey. Provided that it respects this independent character of Turkey and appreciates the historical and cultural position it represents, it has no better ally in the region than Turkey.

Of course, within the cultural and historical position it will appreciate there is also a fundamental opposition to occupying, expansionist and aggressive Zionism. We do not, of course, overlook that it is not easy to explain this situation to the US despite all its democratic, intellectual and scientific accumulation.

In the meeting he held in Singapore, our Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, while personally repeating to his US counterpart Mike Pompeo that "nothing can be achieved against Turkey with the language of threats and sanctions," also said that the door of cooperation should be kept open on how to overcome the problems. In the end the US must know that it cannot make itself heard by even the smallest country with such a threat, and that by behaving this way it will make matters more complicated when the time comes.

Meanwhile, the language that both Vice President Pence and Trump have displayed in the name of saving Pastor Brunson, ignoring all the court processes in Turkey, amounts to a confession that the story of law that they have told us until now about their own country is not true. Of course, in our beautiful Turkish we can also express this as "reciting one's valor while confessing one's theft."

For they have told us, as it were, a legend about the independent functioning of the law in their own country, both in the matter of extraditing the FETÖ ringleader, whose terrorist acts are proven, and in the matter of prosecuting the deputy general manager of a bank of Turkey who has committed no crime in their country. They expect everyone to believe the legend they tell about how no politician can interfere with the judiciary in this matter, but they can recklessly interfere with the prosecution of someone whose affiliation with, help to, and cooperation with two terrorist organizations is clear on the basis of reasonable and sufficient evidence in Turkey's judiciary.

For US officials to consider these two matters together has become a necessity so as not to collapse their own legends. If they believe that Brunson can be saved through the decisions of politicians in Turkey, then the prosecution of the Halkbank deputy general manager is also a result of their own arbitrary-political decisions, and if they want to behave consistently on that, they must by all means release Hakan Atilla and hand the FETÖ ringleader over to Turkey without regard to any court decision or procedure.

If they remember the independence of the judiciary right here, it would be of great benefit to them to remember the independence of the judiciary also when they set out to save Brunson with all their bombast and bullying. Otherwise they will have to waste a series of American privates and squander a great many American interests in order to save Private Brunson, and the outcome will not even be like in the film. Brunson, as the last victim of this arrogant rage, may have to live out the rest of his life in Turkish prisons.

Meanwhile, a question that requires us to reread everything we have written: Do the politicians acting today in the name of the US really want to save Brunson, or are they sacrificing him to a process whose real aim is to worsen Turkish-US relations even further?

For doesn't the fact that such a crisis was provoked on precisely the day he got out of prison and was put under house arrest make the release of Brunson, who had apparently been set on the path to release, even harder? If so, for which of their plans are those acting in the name of the US using Brunson as a tool? It is also worth looking from this angle.