A bride-to-be and her hen party were killed when their private jet crashed in an Iranian mountain range on the way home from Dubai.
According to reports in Turkish newspapers, the passengers on board were bride-to-be Mina Basaran, 28, and a group of friends who had been celebrating her hen party.
Socialite Mina was a star on social media and has more than 85,000 followers on Instagram. She was reportedly on the management board at her millionaire father Huseyin Basaran’s company, and was next in line to run the business. The other women believed to have been in the hen party were identified by local media as Zeynep Coskun, Ayse And, Burcu Urfali, Asli Izmirli, Liana Hananel, Jasmin Baruh and Sinem Akay.
Several of them worked in fashion, as jewellery or clothes designers, and appear to have all been part of the upper echelons of Istanbul society. An image believed to have been posted on social media by Mina as they took off from Istanbul on Thursday shows the hen party posing with three female crew members.
Mr Basaran is the chairman of Basaran Investment Holding, said to be the owner of the private jet involved in the crash. According media reports, he owns ‘several small businesses and a small investment bank’ and is involved in construction projects. One of his projects – a series of luxury apartment blocks in Istanbul – were called ‘Mina Towers’ after his daughter.
She posted photos on Instagram recently that are believed to be of her hen party, which included eight women. In one of the pictures, Mina poses on tarmac by the private jet, carrying flowers and wearing a denim jacket with the words ‘Mrs Bride’ written on it. She had used the hashtag ‘#bettertogether’.
In another picture, she holds heart-shaped balloons inside the plane and on Saturday, she posted a picture with seven smiling friends from a Dubai resort. The last videos posted to her account showed her enjoying a Rita Ora concert at a popular Dubai nightclub.
Authorities have said all 11 people on board the plane died in the crash but so far, only 10 bodies have been recovered. Today, the plane’s ‘black box’ was found, with investigators hoping it will give them information about what may have caused the crash in the Zagros Mountains outside of the city of Shahr-e Kord, some 230 miles south of Iran’s capital, Tehran. Families of the victims have arrived in Shahr-e Kord, accompanied by Turkish diplomats, IRNA reported.
Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper said the plane’s three crew members – two pilots and one flight attendant – were all women as well. Architect Zeynep Coskun, 28, who recently got engaged and would have married in the summer, was also said to be among those on board, Turkey’s private Dogan news agency said. Melike Kuvvet, the plane’s co-pilot, was a former Turkish air force captain who was dismissed from the military but was hoping to be re-instated in May, Dogan reported.
Photo Credit: Getty
