Who was Mina Basaran, the Turkish bride whose Sharjah-Istanbul plane crashed?

The daughter of a top businessman and her seven friends died along with three crew members when a private plane crashed on Sunday

Mina Basaran was in the UAE with seven friends to celebrate her hen party. Instagram @minabasaran

Wealthy Turkish socialite and business heir Mina Basaran, 28, and her seven friends were killed on Sunday when a private plane travelling from Sharjah to Istanbul crashed in Iran.

Three female crew members were also killed in the accident.

The trip to the UAE was a hen party to celebrate the upcoming wedding of Ms Basaran to Murat Gezer, owner of print shop Metprint Baski Sistemler. According to Turkish media, they were engaged in October at Istanbul’s Soho House and were due to be married on April 14 at Ciragan Sarayi, a five-star hotel on the Bosphorus that is a former Ottoman palace.

On Monday morning, the website of Metprint Baski Sistemler went down due to heavy traffic.

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Turkey’s Transport Ministry said the plane that went down in south-west Iran belonged to a company named Basaran Holding, the private holding company of Turkish businessman Huseyin Basaran, Mina's father.

Mr Basaran is a former deputy chairman of Trabzonspor football club, and his company has invested in many sectors including yachting, finance, construction, tourism, aviation, cement and energy.

His empire started with a hazelnut business in Trabzon in north-eastern Turkey.

Ms Basaran, the eldest of two children and the only daughter, was part of the company’s board of managers and reportedly in line to run the business.

Also on board was Liana Hananel, founder of clothing brand Lily and Rose, a luxury designer swimwear brand, Zeynep Coskun, Jasmin Baruh Siloni, Asli Izmirli, Ayse And, Sinem Akay and Burcu Urfali.

Akay studied fashion in Italy and worked in the fashion and clothing sector.

Ms Urfali also worked in fashion, having studied at Istanbul Technical University and later in New York. She started her own fashion label in 2015 called Bug Uniform, making bespoke work uniforms.

Ms Siloni and Ms Izmir were jewellery designers, and the latter was also the owner of Izmir Jewellery.

Ms Coskun was the daughter of Orhan Coskun, the owner of the Toyota Akkoyunlu Company in Bursa and one of Ms Basaran's closest friends.

Ms And also studied in New York and was working as a psychologist in Turkey.

Ms Basaran posted images of her and her friends on the trip to Instagram profile, which, following the sad news, jumped from 58,000 followers to over 86,700 in a few hours. The account has now been set to private.

The last photo on her Instagram account showed the women at the One and Only Royal Mirage luxury hotel in Dubai.

Mina Towers, one of Istanbul’s biggest construction projects, was being handled by Mr Basaran's company and was named after his daughter.

Ms Basaran graduated from Koc University Business Administration Department and completed a master's degree in London. She has also appeared in fashion magazines such as Vogue Turkey.

According to Hurriyet Daily News, Kerem Kinik, the head of the Turkish Red Crescent, said on Twitter on March 11 that search and rescue teams were deployed to the area of the incident

A website associated with Iranian state TV said local villagers in the Zagros Mountains had reached the site and found 11 badly burned bodies in the wreckage. He said DNA tests would be needed to identify the dead.