Her father, Mehmet Ali Bağana, was one of the first administrators of the Republic of Turkey, instrumental in Turkish land reform.
[5] In 2014, Gonnet-Bağana donated her archive of correspondence, academic research, lecture notes and extensive documentation of Hittitology to Koç University in Turkey.
In 1884, a stone inscription (since lost) of Hittite writing had been documented by W. M. Ramsay, while C. H. Emilie Haspels found second millennium BCE sherds in the area.
[7] Ramsay's inscription was deciphered in 2017 as writing in the Luwian language (on the orders of a local monarch Kupanta-Kurunta), which triggered further interest in Beyköy.
Georges Perrot, a French archaeologist, had claimed that the stone was used in the construction of a local mosque, but this was dismissed by Gonnet-Bağana.