After studying Political Science at the Free University of Berlin, Yücel began his career as a journalist in 1999 with the Jungle World leftist weekly before joining the Die Tageszeitung newspaper in 2007. He has been working with Die Welt since 2015. Yücel is a recipient of the 2011 Kurt Tucholsky Literary Publication award and is the author of Everywhere is Taksim, a book published after the Gezi Park protests of 2014, when peaceful demonstrations organised through social media were harshly repressed.