Turkish plane crash: tragic stories of young lives cut short
One was a pregnant fashion entrepreneur whose company has designed workwear for one of the best-known coffee shop chains in Turkey.
Another was the daughter of the owner of fashion label Mavi, who had planned to get married this summer.
Yet on Sunday, a plane that took off in Sharjah and crashed in Iran cut short the lives of a party of eight close friends who had travelled to Dubai for a hen party, as well as three female crew members.
The trip was to mark the coming wedding of Turkish socialite and business heir Mina Basaran.
A graduate of the private Koc University, Ms Basaran and her friends were from the wealthiest echelons of Turkish society and were educated in the country’s best institutions and abroad.
Some ran their own fashion and jewellery companies while Ms Basaran was being groomed to succeed her father as head of a business empire, Basaran Investment Holdings, that includes interests in finance, tourism, construction and aviation.
In the past, she had graced the pages of magazines such as Vogue Turkey. Huseyin Basaran also named Mina Towers, a luxury development in Istanbul, and a $28.3 million (Dh87.4m) superyacht, after his daughter.
She was due to marry Murat Gezer, who runs his own printing company, at a former Ottoman palace on the banks of the Bosphorus on April 14.
The group recorded their trip to Dubai with a series of posts on social media. One of the final images posted on Instagram by Ms Basaran, 28, showed her in front of the doomed jet.
Clutching a bouquet of flowers, she wore a pair of fluffy pink ears on her head and a denim jacket decorated with an image of an engagement ring and the words “Mrs Bride” and “#bettertogether”.
Another photo showed the hen party crowded together aboard the plane with the flight crew, while the final post showed the eight women in bathrobes at Dubai’s One and Only Royal Mirage hotel.
A video posted to her account showed the friends at a Rita Ora concert in the city.
But their return flight would
never make it home to Istanbul. After leaving Sharjah, the plane got into trouble about an hour after take-off.
The six Turkish and two Spanish nationals died alongside three female Turkish crew when the Bombardier CL604 business jet owned by Basaran Investment Holdings crashed in the Zagros Mountains outside Shahr-e Kord, about 370 kilometres south of Tehran.
Two of the young women were pregnant, Turkish media reported.
Burcu Gundogar Urfali and Jasmin Baruh Siloni were among the women on the luxury break with Ms Basaran.
Also among the close-knit group of friends were another three who were engaged: Zeynep Coskun, Sinem Akay and Ayse And were due to marry this summer, with Ms Coskun’s nuptials planned for May 12 in Istanbul.
Ms Coskun, a 28-year-old architect, was the daughter of another wealthy Turkish industrialist. Orhan Coskun is the owner of the Toyota Akkoyunlu motor company in Bursa, north-west Turkey.
Ms And, 30, was a clinical psychologist who studied in New York, while Ms Akay, 27, was the daughter of Cetin Akay, the former owner of Mavi Jeans, a popular brand in Turkey.
After studying fashion in Italy, she founded the Casa di Denim label, a small accessories brand that made everything from denim.
Ms Urfali also worked in fashion, having studied in Istanbul and New York, and launched her brand, Bug Uniform, in 2015 to create corporate wear.
Ms Siloni and Ms Izmirli were jewellery designers. Another of the group, Ms Liana Hananel, the founder of luxury swimwear brand Lily and Rose, gave birth four months ago. The friends had taken it in turns to attend one another’s hen parties.
The crew was led by pilot Beril Gebes, a former Turkish Airlines pilot. Her co-pilot, Melike Kuvvet, was one of the Turkish Air Force’s first female pilots before leaving to join the private sector. She also lectured on aviation at Istanbul Gelisim University.
Her mother Emine was the first of the victims’ relatives to speak after the accident.
“Allah loved her more than we did so he took her early to be with him,” she told the Dogan News Agency from her home in Konya, central Turkey.
Emine said that her daughter had been excited at the prospect of returning to the armed forces in May, when she was due to be promoted to the rank of major.
Cabin attendant Eda Uslu had worked for Basaran for the past year after 10 years as a member of ground staff with TAV Airports.
Investigators yesterday recovered the black box flight data recorder, which will give an indication of the cause of the crash, which witnesses on the ground said was preceded by a fire on the plane.
Bad weather at the crash site made the operation difficult but the bodies were all recovered and officials said eight had been identified. Iranian media said some would have to be identified by DNA.
The FlightRadar24 tracking website said the aircraft climbed before losing altitude rapidly about 6pm local time on Sunday.
Shortly before the crash, the aircraft was given permission by Iranian air traffic control to climb from about 11,000 metres to 11,300, Dogan reported.
Air accident investigators from Turkey and a team from the Disaster and Emergency Management Directorate also travelled to the crash site on a military flight to liaise with Iranian investigators, the Turkish transport ministry said.
The families of the victims also arrived in Shahr-e Kord accompanied by Turkish diplomats.
Hakan Tekin, the Turkish ambassador to Tehran, said all 11 bodies had been found.
They will be handed over to their families after post-mortem examinations are carried out.