Bülent Duru was born in Ankara in 1971. Following his graduation from Ankara Atatürk High School in 1988, he won a place at Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science, Department of Public Administration in the same year. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in 1992. He completed his Master’s Thesis “Voluntary Environmentalist Agencies in Turkey in the Developmental Process of Environmental Awareness” in 1995 and Ph.D. dissertation “Integrated Approaches in Coastal Zone Management and National Coastal Policy” in 2001. He was employed by Ankara University, Faculty of Political Science in 1993 as a research assistant, and lectured on local management, urbanization policy, rural development, and environmental management. He was dismissed from the Faculty of Political Science in 2017 due to his signing the petition “We will not be a party to this crime” organized by Academics for Peace. He has produced papers, books, compilations, translated works, and studies on urbanization, local management, environmental politics, and political science.