On 28 January 1925, a young Turkish pilot climbed into a small biplane he had designed and built himself, took off, flew for fifteen minutes and landed. It was the first flight ever made by an aircraft built in Turkey. Later that same day, he learned he had been sentenced to jail for doing it without a permit.

His name was Vecihi Hürkuş. A century later, Turkey's new basic trainer, the Hürkuş-II, entered service in September 2026, and its jet trainer, the Hürjet, carries his name too. Few aviation pioneers have been honoured so completely by the industry that once refused to let them fly.

A Mechanic Who Wanted to Fly

Hürkuş was born in Istanbul in 1896 and went to war young. He volunteered for the Balkan Wars in 1912, then served as a mechanic in the Mesopotamia campaign of the First World War. In February 1916 he was badly hurt when the aircraft he was flying in with a pilot named Mehmet Ali stalled and crashed. After he recovered, he trained as a pilot at the aviation school at Yeşilköy.

By December 1916 he was flying with the 7th Airplane Company on the Caucasus front. On 26 September 1917, he and Captain Şükrü Koçak were credited with shooting down a Russian aircraft, which is considered the first aerial victory in Turkish aviation history.

"The Man of Firsts in Turkish Aviation": a TRT Arşiv documentary on Vecihi Hürkuş (Turkish). Video: TRT Arşiv.

Burned His Plane, Escaped From a Russian Camp

His luck ran out on 8 October 1917. Wounded in a dogfight, he made an emergency landing near Erzurum and set fire to his own aircraft so the Russians could not have it. He was taken prisoner and sent to a camp at Nargin, an island off Baku. He escaped with the help of local Azerbaijanis and made his way home through Iran, reaching Istanbul on 13 May 1918.

During the Turkish War of Independence he flew reconnaissance and bombing missions for the nationalist forces. Before the Battle of the Sakarya in 1921, with the Turkish side almost out of serviceable aircraft, he flew a captured Greek de Havilland DH.9 that had made an emergency landing. He named it İsmet and flew 24 reconnaissance sorties with it during the battle.

The First Turkish Aircraft, and a Jail Sentence

In June 1923, Hürkuş finished the drawings for a training and reconnaissance aircraft of his own, the Vecihi K-VI. The air force approved the project, and he built it with friends at the Halkapınar aircraft repair workshop, often working 16 hours a day. The aircraft took 14 months to assemble.

Then came the paperwork. A committee was formed to certify the K-VI, but it had no members qualified to assess an aircraft, so it refused permission to fly. On 28 January 1925, Hürkuş flew it anyway. The fifteen-minute flight was the first by an aircraft built in Turkey. The same day, he was told he had been sentenced to jail for flying without a permit. He resigned from the air force on the spot. The sentence was later lifted, but the K-VI was left outside, not in a hangar, and was eventually destroyed.

Aviation Evangelist

Hürkuş joined the new Turkish Aircraft Society, flew donated aircraft around Anatolia, and in 1926 flew passengers between Ankara and Kayseri in Junkers aircraft, considered the country's first civil aviation flights. His flying impressed even foreign experts. During a demonstration flight for the society's new Ansaldo aircraft, an Italian pilot reportedly praised him to the society's president.

In 1930 he built a second aircraft, the Vecihi K-XIV, in three months in a rented workshop in Kadıköy. It first flew on 16 September 1930, but again he could not get a Turkish flight permit. He took it to Czechoslovakia, where it was certified in April 1931, then flew it home and toured Anatolia with it, covering 5,000 kilometres to raise money and interest in aviation.

In 1932 he opened Turkey's first civil flight school. One of his students, Bedriye Tahir Gökmen, became one of the country's first women pilots. The school was closed in 1934. He later earned an aircraft engineering diploma in Germany, published books and a magazine, and in 1954 founded an airline that was later banned from flying.

TRT Arşiv archive footage on Vecihi Hürkuş and his aircraft (Turkish). Video: TRT Arşiv.

A Name on Turkey's Trainers

Hürkuş died in Ankara on 16 July 1969. The man who was jailed for flying the first Turkish aircraft now gives his name to the aircraft that train Turkey's military pilots. On 28 September 2026, the Turkish Air Force took delivery of its first Hürkuş-II basic trainers.

Sources: Wikipedia (Vecihi Hürkuş, English and Turkish editions), TRT Arşiv, TUSAŞ on X, Daily Sabah. Featured image: Wikimedia Commons, public domain