Zan Foundation for Social, Political and Economic Studies was established in October 2014. However, its intellectual and practical bases have not been laid down until 2008.  A group of young academics and researchers who came together in 2008, with the criticism that Kurds and the Kurdish issue has not yet acquired its well-deserved place in Turkish academic circles and on the political basis, began to publish the journal, "Toplum ve Kuram", leading to the bases of the Zan Foundation. In addition to the journal, the group that organizes seminars, panels, educational studies, conferences over time decided to expand and founded the Zan Foundation to develop and diversify its activities and bring them together under an institutional framework.

Founded in Diyarbakır, the Zan Foundation aims to influence social life and change it by combining the knowledge production and education tradition created by the journal Toplum ve Kuram with the social politics-project creation and implementation in the field of civil society. The Zan Foundation endeavours to organize educational activities at every level as well as produce, introduce, and spread qualified information, and puts special emphasis on the education of the youth and children. It tries to establish itself as an institution with the help of its diverse goals such as building schools at every level, giving scholarships to the students, analyzing today's problems from social, political, economic, cultural aspects, revealing and questioning the history and the memory, producing social projects within the identified problematic areas.