Kadri Gürsel is a columnist and TV debater for Istanbul based TV channel and website Halk TV. He previously had a column at the Turkish daily Milliyet and Cumhuriyet and also wrote for al-monitor.com. His main focuses are Turkish domestic and foreign policy, international affairs, press freedom, Turkey’s Kurdish question, as well as Turkey’s evolving political Islam and its national and regional impacts. Before becoming full-time columnist in the fall of 2008, he was in charge of the foreign news desk of Milliyet as editor. Beginning from 1999, he fulfilled this task for 9 years. Kadri Gürsel also worked for the Agence France-Presse for nearly five years, between 1993 and 1997 as İstanbul based correspondent. In October 2016 he was detained and jailed for 11 months in the operation against Cumhuriyet daily for which he was writing columns and working as an editorial adviser. Kadri Gürsel’s contextualizes this ordeal in the decay of democracy and freedom of the press in Turkey, in his book titled “Ben de Sizin İçin Üzgünüm”, published in November 2018 While in the AFP, he was kidnapped in the Turkish south-east by the PKK in 1995. He narrated his misadventures in the hands of the PKK, which endured 26 days in different locations of the mountainous south-east, in his book entitled “Dağdakiler” (Those of the Mountains) published in 1996. Kadri Gürsel is also the author of a book titled “Turquie Annéee Zéro” published in 2016 in France. Kadri Gürsel is in journalism since 1986. He worked for several daily newspapers and weekly news magazines before joining AFP. Former Board Member of Vienna based International Press Institute (IPI), Kadri Gürsel is currently member of the Administration Board of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF).