Ankara, Mar 30 (AP) A prominent Turkish military analyst and opposition politician accused of engaging in political and military espionage for allegedly selling state secrets to foreign diplomats went on trial on Wednesday.

In the first hearing of the trial against Metin Gurcan, the court ruled to hold the trial behind closed doors on grounds that some of the accusations levelled against him fell within “the scope of state secrets”, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

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Journalists and spectators were asked to leave the courtroom.

Gurcan, 46, faces life imprisonment if found guilty of the charges of obtaining and disclosing state secrets for the purpose of political or military espionage. He has denied the accusations against him.

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Gurcan is a retired army officer and founding member of the opposition Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), which is led by former deputy prime minister Ali Babacan.

He was detained in his apartment in Istanbul on November 29.

Babacan has defended Gurcan, saying the analyst had no means of accessing confidential information and insisting that his analyses consisted of information compiled from open sources. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)