ISTANBUL. Asked for up to 20 years of imprisonment for the Turkish analyst Metin Gurcan accused of “political and military espionage” in favor of Italy and Spain. This was announced by the Dha agency by reporting the text that the accusation presented against Gurcan to the Ankara prosecutor’s office. The analyst allegedly «shared information on state security with foreign governments [turco] of a confidential nature “reads the text that also reports the statements made to the judges of Gurcan who did not accept the accusations, claiming to have provided Italian and Spanish diplomats with reports based on publicly available information.
On November 26, the analyst was arrested at his home in Istanbul on suspicion of providing confidential information about Turkey’s role in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and the Eastern Mediterranean to Italian and Spanish diplomats in exchange for money between 2020 and 2021. Gurcan worked as a military analyst for the Turkish army between 2002 and 2008 and has frequently published insights in various Turkish and international media. In 2020 he founded the opposition party to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Deva (“Remedy” in Turkish) together with Ali Babacan, an influential former minister in various governments led by the current Turkish head of state but resigned from Erdogan Akp’s party in 2019.
Gurcan did not deny that he was paid for drafting strategic and military analyzes, but he strongly rejected the charge of sharing confidential or secret information as well as knowing that his interlocutors were foreign agents. Metin Gurcan left the military in 2015, is 45 years old and is an esteemed military-strategic analyst who collaborates with magazines and sites such as Al Monitor, Turkish Studies, Small Wars Journal, Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict, Perceptions.