Turkey commited to science diplomacy in Mideast: Sayers

One of the founding members, Turkey is fully supporting the high technology center that also serves as a tool for science diplomacy in the Middle East, Zehra Sayers has said. Turkey was one of the first countries to run to the rescue of the center when it risked falling apart, according to Sayers, who was the chair of the scientific committee of the international synchrotron radiation facility project. Sayers became the only Turkish woman to make it to the BBC's most inspiring women 2019 list.
Tell us about the work that brought you other international awards.
I was included in the list based on the work at the center called Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME). The laboratory in Jordan allows interdisciplinary work covering a broad range of fields from archeology to medicine, from art to environment.
Synchroton is an accelerator, a device where electrons are accelerated around the circular orbit. As a result, they emit an intense radiation. You can then use this as a big microscope to analyze materials. Suppose you have unearthed an archeological object, you can analyze the elements in that object to track more information about it. You can go to SESAME for a limited period of time to carry out experiments and take your data home and analyze.
Why is SESAME so special?
It is very expensive to set up and run the synchrotron laboratories. It requires high technology. There are 60 such laboratories in the world but there were none in the Middle East.
The idea came from some Middle Eastern scientists working at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) in the 1960s. They said, "why don't we try to set up a scientific center in the Middle East where...