Nuclear security

Turkey is going nuclear by 2023: Will it succeed?

Fingers crossed, the decades-long ambition to have Turkey’s first nuclear energy capability (at least one of the planned four nuclear reactors) is finally to become a reality by 2023 thanks to the Mersin Akkuyu project, developed jointly with Russia’s Rosatom.
Turkey has a long-standing dream of going nuclear since the 1960s, having ventured five different attempts, with almost all Western companies including the Americans, Canadians, French, German and Japanese. None of these initiatives - except the one now in progress with the Russians - has resulted in any tangible progress for political and economic reasons.

Of course, Turkey is to blame for some of these failures stemming in large measure from its poor commercial calculations, done with Westinghouse, Mitsubishi, AECL, Framatome, Siemens and others. However, there is also some suspicion that the nuclear projects are not only about improving Turkey’s energy supply, but also about building national capacity for a future military nuclear option. Hence, the conspiracy theorists believe that there has always been a “hidden hand” determined to keep Turkey from nuclear energy technology.