She has written predominantly in English for over 25 years, although she has also published in three other languages (French, Turkish, and German).
[citation needed] Özakın studied French in Ankara and in Paris, then worked as a lecturer in Istanbul (at Atatürk Egitim Enstitusu, which is now part of Marmara University).
[3] Three months after the 1980 Turkish military coup, Aysel Özakın left Turkey to attend the Berlin Literary Colloquium.
[6][7][8] She met her future husband, the English painter and sculptor Bryan Ingham, in Worpswede, Germany.
Özakın moved to Cornwall, England in 1988 to escape the limitations of publishing in Germany,[9] and married him in 1989.