Can Merey was born in 1972 in Frankfurt on the Main to a Turkish father and a German mother. He spent some of his school years in Teheran, Singapore and Cairo. Having studied social work, he first worked in this field in Aachen, then went to Istanbul to work as freelance journalist.
After that, he applied for a traineeship at the dpa (en.: German press agency). For them he worked in Istanbul and in Berlin in the Germany section and also as a correspondent on environment and consumers' protection issues. From 2003 till 2013 Can Merey was South East Asia correspondent for the dpa in New Delhi and has travelled numerous times to Afghanistan on research assignments. Ever since he is based in Istanbul, as head of department for the dpa.