Born in 1954 in New York City, where his parents lived while graduate students at Yale University, Kuran spent his early childhood in Ankara, where his father taught at the Middle East Technical University. When he was a teenager, his family moved to Istanbul. For a decade, he lived just off the campus of Boğaziçi University, where his father was president and professor of Islamic architectural history.
Kuran obtained his secondary education in Turkey, graduating from Robert College in Istanbul in 1973. He then studied economics at Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude in 1977. He went on to Stanford University to obtain a doctorate in economics. His doctoral supervisor was Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel laureate.
