Thorium and Türkiye's future
Prof. Dr. Engin Arık, who said that thorium mines would be a solution to our country's energy problem and carried out studies on this subject, lost her life along with her team in the plane crash that occurred in Isparta on November 30, 2007.
On the anniversary of Engin Arık's death, her student Baki Akkuş, the President of the Turkish Physical Society, made some statements.
Baki Akkuş, stating that he had bought a plane ticket for a few days later due to his work, said, "The known incident happened. I cannot call it an accident. The plane went down".
According to official records, the cause of Prof. Dr. Engin Arık's death is the plane crash that occurred near Isparta on November 30, 2007, but conspiracy theories are being put forward on this matter. Engin Arık and her team had important studies on thorium mines and Türkiye's nuclear energy potential, and for this reason, it is thought that they became targets.
Although this situation has led to claims and conspiracy theories being put forward in public opinion and on various platforms that the crash may actually have been an assassination or sabotage, these claims have not been officially proven.
Prof. Dr. Engin Arık advocated for Türkiye to become a full member of CERN and for the country to benefit from these studies. She also carried out work on this matter in Türkiye and even pioneered the establishment of an institution called TARLA (The Turkish Accelerator and Radiation Laboratory).
Prof. Dr. Engin Arık is one of the people who, starting from 1991, laid the foundation, together with figures such as Prof. Dr. Asım Barut and Prof. Dr. Saleh Sultansoy, of the idea of establishing a national high-energy physics and accelerator center in Türkiye. She made intensive efforts for the institutionalization and preparation of the infrastructure of the Turkish Accelerator Center project, which was planned to be implemented in Ankara Gölbaşı with the support of the State Planning Organization (SPO). She personally assumed responsibility for the detector and experimental parts of this center to be established.
Arık's widely known vision in public opinion of "Türkiye meeting its own energy needs through its thorium reserves" was directly connected to these accelerator projects. She predicted that the proton accelerators at the center to be established would make possible the prototype of a new generation of safe nuclear power plants running on thorium in the future.
Prof. Dr. Engin Arık and the other valuable scientists in her team lost their lives in the plane crash that occurred in Isparta on November 30, 2007, while they were on their way to a workshop directly related to this accelerator project and thorium studies. However, this initiative she started continued over the years, and the TARLA project rose on her legacy and became Türkiye's first free-electron laser and accelerator facility.
Unfortunately, The Republic of Türkiye was unable to protect these valuable scientists.