Born in Medgidia to an ethnic Tatar Muslim family, Gemil completed primary and secondary studies in his native town, and graduated from the Faculty of History and Philosophy at the University of Iaşi (1965), where he later received a PhD.[1][2] He was employed by the A. D. Xenopol Institute of History and Archeology in Iaşi, and later by the Nicolae Iorga Institute of History in Bucharest.[1][2] A native speaker of Crimean Tatar and Romanian, Gemil has studied Ottoman and Modern Turkish, Turkmen, and Azerbaijani, as well as having a grasp of English, French, Uzbek, Kazakh and Kyrgyz.[1]