Born in Istanbul, Hürkuş graduated from the Tophane Art School and later joined the Ottoman Army in the Balkan Wars in 1912.

During the Turkish War of Independence, he was a pilot involved in bombing Greek forces and a minor friendly fire incident.

He used the plane to fly domestically to introduce aviation, hold conferences and collect donations for the TTaC, which he later left after his assistant was fired.

Vecihi Hürkuş was born on 6 January 1896 in Akıntıburnu [tr], Arnavutköy, Istanbul, to customs officer Faham Bey and Zeliya Nihir Hanım.

[2] During the Turkish War of Independence, Hürkuş married Hadiye Hanım, the daughter of the chief of police in Akşehir.

[7] On 12 February 1916, he made a reconnaissance flight near modern-day Palestine with another pilot, senior lieutenant Mehmet Ali.

[7][9] He and captain Şükrü Koçak are credited with shooting down a Russian aircraft in combat on 26 September 1917,[7] which is considered the first in Turkish aviation history.

He was taken to and held captive at a prisoner-of-war camp in Nargin, but later escaped with the help of Azerbaijanis,[4] and returned to Istanbul on 13 May 1918 via Iran.

[10] In June 1920, he and a few aviator friends stole a plane from occupied Istanbul to join the Kuva-yi Milliye in Anatolia.

He joined the aircraft station in Konya as a pilot, and he made reconnaissance and assault flights from there in support of the Turkish Army.

[11] In late March 1921, Hürkuş was involved in bombing Greek forces around Bursa and Bilecik multiple times with a Pfalz D.III after taking off from Eskişehir.

The bombing runs ended on 25 March, when Hürkuş had an engine failure and was forced to return and land.

[12] Prior to the Battle of the Sakarya, the Turkish Air Force only had a single operational hunting aircraft, as two had been shot down and one was in need of repairs.

On 19 August 1921, Hürkuş flew a captured de Havilland DH.9 of the Greek Air Force, which had made an emergency landing at Kuşadası a month prior.

[9] By 14 June 1923, Hürkuş had finished the technical drawings of his new training and reconnaissance aircraft, the Vecihi K-VI.

Together with his friends, Hürkuş started to work on building the plane at the Halkapınar Aircraft Repair Workshop.

[23] Hürkuş joined the newly formed Turkish Aircraft Society (TTaC) after leaving the air force.

[26] On 3 July, he went to Europe with three other committee members, and visited aviation facilities in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, France, and Italy.

After leasing a lumber shop in Kadıköy with sea access,[30] he built his second aircraft, Vecihi K-XIV, in three months.

[26] In September 1931, he flew 5,000 kilometres (3,100 mi) through Anatolia, and made talks after the flights to convince the crowd to make donations to the TTaC.

Additionally, the Vecihi K-XIV was banned from flights; both reasons caused Hürkuş to resign from the TTaC.

[43] On 21 April 1932, Hürkuş officially founded Turkey's first civil aviation school, the Vecihi Sivil Tayyare Mektebi.

This had to be delayed to at least February 1933 due to more constructions taking place, but Hürkuş continued to use 27 September as it was a symbolic date.

[51] On 17 September 1934, the school was shut down by the Müdafaa-i Milliye Vekâleti as "the government was planning to create a modern and large institution for a wider and more fundamental dissemination of civil aviation".

[34] In 1933, with the help of a financial donation by fellow aviator Nuri Demirağ, he built the Vecihi K-XVI, which had a cabin, in his workshop.

[53] In 1935, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk asked Fuat Bulca to create a new aviation project with the TTaC and have Hürkuş involved in it.

[55] After the TTaC was renamed as the Turkish Aeronautical Association (THK), Hürkuş joined the it again and was sent to the Weimar Engineering School in Germany in 1937.

Towards the end of his life, Hürkuş was in debt due to the insurance costs of the planes that were unable to fly; even his payments from the government for his national service were confiscated.

[9] According to Abdullah Aydoğan of the Kırşehir Ahi Evran University, Turkish aviation "gained valuable experience" thanks to Hürkuş's initiatives despite the "limited resources at his disposal".

[65] In 2022, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) started filming Savunma Sanayiinin Yalnız Dehaları, (English:The Lonely Geniuses of the Defense Industry) a documentary which focuses on the lives of five important Turkish people in national defense, including Hürkuş.