His father Bekir Osmanov was an agronomist of Crimean Tatar ethnicity who became a scout for the Soviet partisans during the German occupation of Crimea, during which Yuri was evacuated to Azerbaijan with his mother, a Belarusian.

Despite being just a small child during World War II, having been away from Crimea during the conflict, and being the son of a wounded partisan, the declaration that Crimean Tatars were traitors was applied to him and he was treated like a second-class citizen as a result.

After completing secondary school in 1958 with excellent marks he applied to enter Moscow State University since his grades were high enough, but he was rejected because he was Crimean Tatar and hence officially forbidden from attending an institution outside Central Asia.

However, Amet-khan Sultan put in a good word about Osmanov to academics, and he was eventually allowed to attend Bauman Moscow State Technical University.

[3] At that time Osmanov became an activist, most deported peoples who had survived the "special settler" regime including Chechens and Kalmyks were completely allowed to return to their homeland and were not denied residence permits necessary for doing so; however, Soviet leadership did not apply the same policy for Crimean Tatars, and as a result a vast majority of Crimean Tatars were forced to remain in exile due to being unable to get a residence permits in Crimea.

[4][5][6] However, the official Soviet narrative was that the Crimean Tatars had taken root in their place of exile and had equal rights - despite not having the same rights to residence permits in their previous land of residence as other deported nations, and the claim that Crimean Tatars had "taken root" was a false;[7] there was an overwhelming desire to return to Crimea,[8] a theme pervasive throughout all aspects of their culture, ranging from embroidery featuring the peninsula to the mournful song Ey Guzel Qirim.

In effect, the government was punishing Crimean Tatars for being Stakhanovites while rewarding the deported nations that contributed less to the building of socialism, creating further resentment.

[11][6] In January 1968 Osmanov faced his first arrest for distributing documents stating grievances of Crimean Tatars and demanding full rehabilitation, for which he was sentenced to two and a half years in a high-security penal labour colony at the Kyzylkum gold mine.

[27] Less than two years after Gromyko's commission had rejected their request for autonomy and return, pogroms against the exiled Meskhetian Turks were taking place in Central Asia.

While the goal of Osmanov's Fergana faction, which later became the NDKT (Russian: НДКТ, Национального движения крымских татар) was to conform within the Soviet system[32] was the restoration of the Crimean ASSR under the Leninist principle of national autonomy for titular indigenous peoples in their homeland, the Dzhemilev faction, at the time under the banner of the OKND, which later became the Mejilis, wanted the creation of an independent Crimean Tatar state.

His widow complained to the Supreme Court of Ukraine, insisting that her husband was the victim of a political assassination and not a typical mugging by street hooligans.