The Zaza language is widely spoken in the eastern Anatolian region of Turkey. The Zazas argue that their language is of Persian origin and therefore distinct from Kurdish. However, the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) views the Zaza language as one of the four dialects of Kurdish. Kurmanci is also considered to be a Kurdish dialect.

In the 2009-10 school year, 370 of 844 students chose to take Kurmanci language courses and 300 chose to take Zaza courses. One year later, despite an increase in the number of students, 181 students opted to take Kurmanci and 104 decided to take Zaza language courses at Tunceli University.

The end of the registration period for the 2011-12 academic year, which began in October, revealed that no students had enrolled in either Kurmanci or Zaza courses.

Rector Durmuş Boztuğ, who said the majority of students are from eastern and southeastern Turkey, told Cihan that the university surveyed students to determine why the interest in the language courses had suddenly dropped to zero. “Students gave a variety of answers in our studies, but three came to the forefront. Many said it was already their mother tongue, so they chose other electives like music, art and physical education. Other students said that the teachers were not sufficient, and the third most frequent answer was that the students´ mother tongue was Turkish,” he said.

According to Boztuğ, there was an initial interest in taking Kurmanci and Zaza courses, but later the students who were actually interested decided not to take the classes because they “were already taking English language courses.”