Hasan Reşit Tankut

In 1935, he and other representatives of the Turkish Language Association, were involved in the development of the Sun Language Theory.^[4] He was also a supporter of the Turkish History Thesis as well as the Turkification campaign of the Government of Kemal Atatürk.^[5] In 1937, upon Atatürk's demand, Tankut attended an Anthropology and Archaeology Conference in Bucharest, to introduce the Sun Language Theory.^[6] Apart from being a founder of the Turkish Language Association,^[6] he was also the head of its etymology branch.^[7]

As an inspector for the Turkish Hearths^[8] he received free access to the Kurdish provinces,^[9] and he used this freedom for his studies. On the sixth congress of the Turkish Hearths in 1926, he made public that during his journeys he has seized several books in many non-Turkish languages.^[10] In 1940 on another journey which included visiting Bitlis, he noticed with satisfaction that the Sharafname of the Kurdish author Sharaf Khan Bidlisi was not read anymore by the local population.^[10] In 1961 he supported the idea to settle Turks in between Kurds and Zazas in order to make them more available to turkification.^[11][8] During his lifetime he published several ethnological studies about the Zazas, Kurds and the Alevis,^[12] and books about the Sun Language Theory.^[13]

He also served several terms in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey as a representative for the provinces Muş, (1931-1935), Maraș^[14](1935-1950), Hatay (1950-1954), and Mardin (1957-1960).^[2] In 1940 he undertook a journey to the provinces of Siirt, Van, Bitlis and Muş in order to secure the loyalty of the population in the case an eventual participation in the World War II. He doubted that the Kurdish speaking population would stay loyal to the Turkish Republic in that case.^[15]