Her father, Cevdet Ferit, was a lawyer and lecturer of criminal procedure at Darülfünun, in what is today Istanbul University; her mother was Ayşe Nikfal.
[2] She completed her primary and secondary education in Lycée Notre Dame de Sion Istanbul, and took the academic qualification Baccalauréat (diploma) in French and Turkish at Galatasaray High School.
[1][3] She was the maternal aunt of Orhan Pamuk (born 1952), novelist, screenwriter, academic, and the first Turkish recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (2006).
[1][2] During her university education, she attracted the attention of her German professors Richard Honig (1890–1981) and Andreas Bertalan Schwarz (1886–1953) with her advanced knowledge of foreign language in French and Latin.
In 1938, Türkan Basman received her Doctor of Jurisprudence degree with a thesis on Senatus consultum Vellaeanum and Obligation Assume of Women in the Roman Empire.