Charged with 'espionage,' DEVA Party's Metin Gürcan released after five months under arrest

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Facing up to 35 years in prison for "espionage," Metin Gürcan, a founding member of the Democracy and Progress (DEVA) Party, a splinter movement from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has been released from arrest.

Gürcan was detained at his home in İstanbul on November 26 in an investigation for "obtaining classified information of the state for political or military espionage purposes" and was arrested on November 29.

After his arrest, photos showing him with diplomats from Spain and Italy had surfaced. Gürcan said he had been preparing reports for diplomatic missions of those countries, but all the information he provided had been compiled from open sources.

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.

(EMK/VK)