Dr. İlyas Akman, an academic from Diyarbakır, has received the title of professor in the field of Zazaki (Kirmancki), becoming Turkey’s and the world’s first professor of the Zaza language. Akman, a faculty member in the Department of Kurdish Language and Literature at the Faculty of Letters of Mardin Artuklu University, had also received the title of Turkey’s first associate professor of Zaza Language and Literature in 2020.
Akman, who has played a critical role in documenting Zaza Language and Literature and bringing it up to scientific standards, is said to have broken new ground in research on Eastern languages and literatures with this title.
Akman, who served as a visiting faculty member for one year at Columbia University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, taught at various universities in Europe, most notably the University of Hamburg. Having authored numerous works and articles in Zazaki, including “Modern Zaza Hikayeciliği,” “Zaza Romancılığı,” and “Sözden Yazıya Zazaca,” Akman aims to increase the international representation of Zaza Language and Literature with his new title.
Why it matters
For a language to begin being represented at the professorship level is a sign that it has moved beyond being an auxiliary subject at the university and is now regarded as a field of specialization in its own right. For Zazaki, this threshold shows that the effort to document the language and bring it up to scientific standards has been carried from individual labor to institutional status. The development concerns most directly students in Kurdish language and literature departments and researchers seeking to enter this field; for them, a career path extending from associate professorship to full professorship has been concretely shown to be possible. The title being held by a figure who has taught at universities in America and Europe points to a body of experience that could strengthen Zazaki studies’ ties with academia abroad. In contrast, the question of whether a single professorship will turn into an independent department, new positions, and a student quota remains open for now.
Background
Turkey is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 93 news stories featuring this name in the last 90 days; the most recent is dated October 7, 2026.