Şevqiy was born in 1888 in Kavaklar, today officially known as Plopeni, a village situated in the Crimean Tatar countryside west of Mangalia, in Dobruja.  At the time, the region was part of the Kingdom of Romania; from 1420 to 1878, it was part of the Ottoman Empire.  His parents were prosperous farmers hailing from Crimea.  As a result of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–74) followed by the loss of Crimea to the Russians in 1783, in the early 19th century consecutive waves of threatened Crimean Tatars left their properties and fled to the Ottoman Empire.  Some of them settled in Dobruja, but by the time Şevqiy was born the region had been annexed by the Kingdom of Romania at the end of another Russo-Turkish War (1877–78).  When Şevqiy was 6 years old, his father, who was also a schoolteacher and the governor of township, convinced many of his fellow villagers to move further inland to Anatolia, Turkey.  They settled in Central Anatolia,  west of Ankara, near Polatlı on the road to Eskişehir, naming their village Karakaya.