Faik and Fatma Gökçe gave birth to him. Salt Bae shares the same parents as his three siblings: two brothers, Erman Gökçe and Uur Gökçe, and a sister, Zgür Gökçe.
Salt Bae's father worked in the mines, and due to financial restrictions in his family, he was forced to drop out of sixth grade when he was about eleven or twelve years old.
He dropped out of school and began working as a butcher apprentice in Istanbul's Kadköy district.