She has a PhD in Political Science from the CUNY Graduate Center. Her dissertation was on Turkish Foreign Policy in the aftermath of the Cold War. She has a bachelor's degree in Economics from Franklin and Marshall College and a master's in Economics from Boston University. Yasemin has done extensive research on women's rights, particularly on the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Although Yasemin considers herself a true New Yorker, she was born in Ankara, Turkey and grew up in Nairobi, Kenya.