Aram Safrastyan was born in 1888 in the Aygestan neighborhood of Van, Ottoman Empire to the family of a teacher.

In 1915, after graduating from university with honors, Safrastyan went to work as a teacher at the Galatasaray College in the Pera district of Constantinople, where he taught from 1915 to 1917.

Safrastyan joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in his youth and was the head of the ARF party organization in Constantinople at one point after World War I.

In the 1920s, Safrastyan contributed to the creation of the Latin-based Azerbaijani alphabet created to replace the Arabic script theretofore used.

In 1926, Safrastyan participated in the All-Union Turkological Congress convened in Baku as a deputy of from the Georgian SSR.