After graduating from the Turkish War Academy in 1998 Metin Gurcan joined the Turkish Special Forces and served in Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kosovo and Iraq as the military adviser/liaison officer between 2000-2008. In 2008-2010 he achieved an MA degree in Security Studies from the US Naval Post-Graduate School, Monterey. In 2010-2014 he worked as an analyst officer in the Turkish General Staff. No longer working with the military, he is currently writing his PhD dissertation on changes to the Turkish military over the last decade. In 2014 he worked as a visiting research fellow at the Changing Character of War (CCW) at Oxford University on counterinsurgency efforts in tribal and Muslim settings. He has been published extensively in Turkish and foreign academic journals about the changing nature of warfare, terrorism, Turkish civil-military relations, military history and Turkish foreign policy. Metin Gurcan has another forthcoming book, entitled The Gallopoli Campaign: The Turkish Perspective, which has been co-edited with Professor Robert Johnson of Oxford University and will be published in May 2016.
It is not solely an autobiography but something much more. -- Bill Thomas PMCI Magazine This book not only challenges some of the fundamentals of traditional counterinsurgency wisdom and emphasizes the importance of the tactical level - a rarely-studied field from the COIN perspective - but also blends the firsthand field experiences of the author with deep analyses. -- Paul Norman Books Monthly