Turkey’s Constitutional Court intervened promptly, in mid-February, to block temporarily the pending deportation and reentry ban ordered against a US citizen active in Christian ministry in Turkey for the past 17 years.
Without the High Court’s provisional ruling, Canadian-American David Byle would have been the fourth American Christian with long-term residency in Turkey to have been ordered out of the country in the past six months. All have been charged with posing a ‘threat to national security’, without explanation.
One of the four, pastor Andrew Brunson of the Izmir Resurrection Church, was detained on deportation orders in October, but then, after two months without explanation or access to a lawyer, accused by the government of links with what it says is an armed terrorist organisation. He was sent to prison in December, with his lawyer still refused access to the alleged evidence filed against him, apparently under emergency-law restrictions in place after the failed coup attempt against the Turkish Government in July. The other two, pastor Patrick Jensen in Gaziantep and refugee aid worker and academic Ryan Keating in Ankara, were both deported and banned from returning in August and October, respectively. But in Byle’s deportation case, the highest legal body for constitutional review in Turkey responded within hours to an urgent appeal from Byle’s lawyer.
