Turkish immigration authorities refused to permit Canadian-American Christian David Byle to enter Turkey on 20 November when he returned to Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport after being deported in October.
After living and ministering in Turkey for the past 19 years, the 49-year-old evangelist was told by police officials on his arrival that a permanent re-entry ban had been filed against him, forbidding him to ever return to the country.
At the time he left, he had been told by his police interrogators in Ankara that he would not be banned from returning to Turkey if he paid his required over-stay fine when he left. But when he returned via Germany to join his wife and children in Istanbul, he was informed at passport control that he could not enter; instead, he would be held in custody until he could be deported on the next Turkish Airlines flight back to Stuttgart, his last port of departure.
