DEVA Party’s Metin Gürcan detained on 'espionage' charges

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Academic Metin Gürcan, also one of the founders of the opposition DEVA Party, has announced that he has been detained for "political espionage".

A member of the DEVA's Founders' Committee, Metin Gürcan wrote on his social media account earlier this morning (November 26):

"I am being detained on charge of political espionage. Police are at home, conducting a search... I am shocked. I want your support."

In a statement on his Twitter account later in the day, DEVA Party Vice Chair Mustafa Yeneroğlu has stated that upon the warrant issued by the Bakırköy Criminal Judgeship of Peace, a search was conducted at Metin Gürcan's residence at around 5 am this morning.

According to the search warrant, Yeneroğlu has said, Gürcan has been detained as part of an investigation launched by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in 2020. There are reportedly other people detained as part of the same investigation, Yeneroğlu has added.

DEVA Party was founded in March 2020 and it is currently chaired by Ali Babacan, a former minister from the ruling AKP.

About Metin Gürcan

Retired soldier, academic, politician.

Born in Bilecik in 1976, he graduated from the Land Forces Academy as a Systems Engineer Infantry Lieutenant.

He worked in different units of the Turkish Armed Forces in 1998-2014. Following the end of his mandatory service, he voluntarily retired in 2015 in order to pursue his academic career. For eight years of his professional career, he was on various operational, liaison and training duties in Turkey's Southeast Anatolian region, Iraq, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

In 2008-2010, he did his Master's in Security Studies at the US Marine Forces Institute with a thesis on "center-periphery relations between the Kurdish Regional Government and Baghdad center."

He did his PhD at the Department of Political Science of Bilkent University in 2016; his thesis was on the Turkish Armed Forces' institutional capacity and will of change. It was published as a book in 2018: "Opening the Blackbox: Turkish Military Before and After July 15."

He was a guest researcher at the Solomon Asch Conflict Center/ Bryn Mawr College in 2009 and at the Oxford University Changing Character of War-CCW program in the years of 2014 and 2015.

He has 22 academic articles on the changing nature of conflict, terrorism, riots and resisting riots, civilian-military relations, foreign policy and military strategy published in national and international peer reviewed journals. He also periodically writes for various news websites.

He co-edited the book "The Gallipoli Campaign: The Turkish Perspective" with Prof. Robert Johnson from the University of Oxford; the book was published in April 2016. His book titled "What went wrong in Afghanistan?: Understanding Counterinsurgency in Tribalized, Rural, Muslim Environments" was also published in May 2016. (AS/SD)