	Yeten was born in 1910 at Vodina, in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire (present-day Greece). His father, a major in the Ottoman Army moved his family of six children to İstanbul, settling in the Beşiktaş district when Yeten was a year old. In 1914, Yeten's father was killed in the Battle of the Dardanelles. Yeten went on to attend military high school, as his two elder brothers did before him.