Today, the Republic of Turkey became an Associate Member of CERN. This follows notification that Turkey has ratified an agreement signed last year, granting that status to the country.

Turkish physicists are active in the ALICE, ATLAS, and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, and are also involved with the CAST and OPERA experiments as well as experiments at the ISOLDE facility. Turkish physicists participated in the CHORUS neutrino experiment, where they made important contributions to data analysis. Turkish physicists are also participating in the AMS-02 experiment, and a team of Turkish physicists is engaged in simulations and theoretical work connected with CLIC. Turkey operates a Tier-2 centre of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, and some 110 Turkish scientists are registered users of CERN’s facilities. 

Turkey’s Associate Membership will strengthen the long-term partnership between CERN and the Turkish scientific community. Associate Membership will allow Turkey to attend meetings of the CERN Council. Moreover, it will allow Turkish scientists to become members of the CERN staff, and to participate in CERN’s training and career development programmes. Finally, it will allow Turkish industry to bid for CERN contracts, thus opening up opportunities for industrial collaboration in areas of advanced technology.