CERN Director General Rolf Heuer and Mr Taner Yildiz, Minister for Energy and Natural Resources of the Republic of Turkey, have signed an agreement admitting Turkey to CERN Associate Membership, subject to ratification by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Meclis.
 
“The Turkish scientific community has a long and proud history of involvement with CERN’s programmes stretching back over 40 years,” said Professor Heuer, “it is therefore a great pleasure, and an honour for me to cement that relationship with today’s signature.” 
 
“This is a very special moment for Turkey and Turkish scientific community”, said Mr Yildiz. “Today we signed the agreement for "Associate Membership" to CERN, which reflects decades of achievement where Turkish scientists have contributed to the European scientific efforts at CERN. I am fully confident that with this signature, the relations between Turkey and CERN will further develop on a win-win basis.”
 
Turkey was granted Observer Status at CERN in 1961. In 2008 a Co-operation Agreement between CERN and the Turkish Atomic Energy Authority (TAEK) was signed concerning the further development of scientific and technical cooperation in high-energy physics. Turkish physicists have participated in a number of CERN experiments over recent years, notably CHORUS where they made several important contributions to data analysis. 
 
Today, Turkish physicists are active in the ALICE, ATLAS, CMS andLHCb experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, and are also involved with the CAST, NA63 and OPERA experiments as well as experiments at the ISOLDE facility. Turkey operates a Tier-2 centre of the Worldwide LHC SuperComputing 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 programs. Finally, it will allow Turkish industry to bid for CERN contracts, thus opening up opportunities for industrial collaboration in areas of advanced technology.