Avni Özgürel

Avni Özgürel — Biography

Born in 1948 in Ankara, Mehmet Avni Özgürel began his career in journalism at the Ulus newspaper before working for Milliyet, Akşam, Yeni İstanbul and Ayrıntılı Haber; he later served as special news editor at Sabah and Radikal and as editor-in-chief of Yeni Ufuk, and also spent time at the Gelişim Yayınları publishing house.

Alongside journalism, Özgürel built a career as a screenwriter, starting in 1981 with Belene, a TRT production about the situation of Bulgaria's Turkish minority. He went on to write the screenplays for Zincirbozan (2007), about the 1980 Turkish coup; Sultan Avrupa'da (2009), about Sultan Abdülaziz's 1867 trip to Europe; and Mahpeyker: Kösem Sultan (2010), and both wrote and produced Darbe (2014), about the February 2012 Turkish intelligence crisis.

Known for his reporting on Kurdish affairs and intelligence matters, he has been described as having close ties to Turkey's National Intelligence Organization and has interviewed senior PKK figure Murat Karayılan. In 2013 he was appointed to the 63-member Committee of Wise Men convened to support the Kurdish-Turkish solution process, and he has continued to write political and intelligence-focused commentary. He married Ayfer Özgürel in 1975.