Ohannes Kiliçdagi was born in Istanbul, Turkey. After following Armenian community schools during primary and high school education he gained his double major degree in Sociology and Political Science at Bogaziçi University in the same city in 1999. Through studying on the late Ottoman period and writing his MA thesis titled ‘The Bourgeois Transformation and Ottomanism among Anatolian Armenians after the 1908 Revolution’ he formally added history into his academic interests. He is currently working on his PhD dissertation at the history department of Bogaziçi University about Ottoman Armenians between 1908 and 1914. He is especially interested in the political projects, projections, and hopes of the Ottoman Armenians just after the 1908 Revolution when a constitutional regime was founded after 33 years of autocracy.

He also works on the present social and political problems of Armenian community in Turkey. As a product of this study he wrote, as co-author, a report named ‘Hearing Turkey’s Armenians: Issues, Demands and Policy Recommendations’ published by Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation which is one of the prominent civil society institutions of Turkey. Besides being teaching assistant at the Sociology department of Istanbul Bilgi University, he has been one of the columnists of AGOS newspaper, which is a bilingual (Turkish and Armenian) weekly paper, since August 2011. He has translated a bunch of William Saroyan short stories into Turkish that have been published in two volumes by Aras Publishing in Istanbul.