At the age of five, his father Mehmet Reşit Bey had died, and he continued living with his mother Sıdıka Hanım and his uncle Sezai Bey[citation needed].
Sezai Bey enrolled him in Galatasaray High School where he studied.
In his school years he practiced Italian, Greek, English and French by exchanging letters with his foreign friends.
During the First World War he worked for the Special Organization of the Ottoman Empire.
In the Turkish Independence War he was received by Mustafa Kemal and was ordered to infiltrate an encampment of the Greek Army.