A native of Turkey's Dargeçit district, known to its Assyrian native population as Kerburan, parts of which are located in southeastern Anatolia's Mardin Province, Yusuf Çetin expressed interest in Syriac Church doctrine at an early age.
In the course of completing his secondary education, he also learned the Syriac language and subsequently attended his home province's Mor Gabriel Monastery, Syriac Orthodoxy's oldest surviving monastic institution.
By 1977 he was consecrated with the title of "spiritual" and received an invitation from Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I Iwas to come to Syria, thus enabling his attendance at Damascus' St. Mor Efrem School of Theology.
On 28 September 1986, upon the request of Istanbul's community of Syriac faithful, Mor Filiksinos Yusuf Çetin was elevated by the Patriarch to the rank of Metropolitan bishop and assigned to the diocese of İstanbul and Ankara as the Patriarchal Vicar.
Twenty years into his service, on 30 November 2006, he held talks with Pope Benedict XVI as the pontiff initiated his 2006 papal journey to Turkey.