She was the granddaughter of Darugazade Mehmet Emin Bey, Sultan Abdülhamid's first chamberlain, the poet and translator of Jules Verne’s novels from French into Turkish.
Roman and Greek history, debates on art and literature were the staple fair at the dinner table of this intellectual family of the late Ottoman era.
Moreover, the family celebrated all religious rituals of the city like Christmas, Easter, Ramadan and sacrificial festivals, organizing fancy dress parties.
After attending several excavations, at the very end of the 1970s, she started to preside over the Şemsiyetepe historical site in the southeast of Turkey, which is now under water after a regional dam construction.
After a decade of excavation efforts in Şemsiyetepe, just near the river Euphrates, she commenced Dorylaion, a Phrygian-Hittite settlement located in Eskişehir, Central Anatolia.