The hijackers were five Turkish nationals of Caucasian origin, Muhammed Emin Tokcan (b. 1969 in Gebze), Tuncer Özcan (b. 1968 in Düzce), Sedat Temiz, Erdinç Tekir (b. 1966 in Istanbul), Ertan Coşkun (b. 1960 in Zonguldak), Ceyhan Mollamehmetoğlu, an ethnic Abkhaz from Abkhazia, Khamzat Gitsba (b. 1971), and two Chechens, Ramazan Zubareyev (b. 1963) and Viskhan Abdurrahmanov (b. 1967).
The East Marmara Development Agency is a sui generis public institution, vested with a special legal entity and responsible from the TR42 NUTS-2 Region consists of Kocaeli, Sakarya, Düzce, Bolu and Yalova provinces of the Republic of Turkey.
Circassian population in Turkey is concentrated on two belts of habitation; first one from the province of Samsun to Hatay, the second from Düzce to Çanakkale, especially in Balıkesir.
The province is 3.481 km² in size and has a population of 619,703 Its adjacent provinces are Düzce to the southwest, Bolu to the south, Karabük to the southeast, and Bartın to the east.