Massive power outages hit Turkey

ASTANA. KAZINFORM - Power was lost in many regions at 10.36 a.m. The İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality announced that many transport services in İstanbul were cancelled, such as the metro, tram and funicular railway systems and the Marmaray line, which links the city's Asian and European sides via an undersea commuter train line. Tram and Marmaray services started again at around 1 p.m. Traffic signal systems in a number of districts in İstanbul also crashed due to the outage. Metro services and high-speed-train services were halted in the capital Ankara, causing long lines in metro stations. The Cihan news agency reported that hearings in Ankara courtrooms were also cancelled due to the outage.

In remarks to reporters before a parliamentary meeting of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that all possible causes of the outage were being investigated and did not rule out sabotage, but said that trouble with transmission lines was the most likely reason for the problem.

"Our main target right now is to restore the network. This is not an incident that we see frequently," Energy Minister Taner Yıldız said during a trip to Bratislava, in comments broadcast on Turkish television. "I can't say at this stage whether or not terrorism is a high or low possibility. I can't say either whether it is a cyber-attack," he said in response to questions from reporters.

He also said that electricity had begun to be supplied to important areas in Ankara, including Parliament. Main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Sezgin Tanrıkulu submitted a parliamentary question over the outage, asking for the government to reveal the reason for and cost of the power outage.

The website of Bogazici Electricity Distribution Company (BEDAŞ) crashed due to heavy traffic.

Major cities and provinces suffering from outages include Adana, Ankara, Antalya, Aydın, Bilecik, Bitlis, Bursa, Çanakkale, Denizli, Elazıg, Eskişehir, Erzurum, Hatay, İzmir, Kocaeli, Mugla, Samsun, Sinop, Tekirdag, Trabzon, Tunceli and Zonguldak according to reports in Turkish media.

Cihan said that the national electricity system crashed and power plants are not working. However, the exact cause of the outage is not yet known, Kazinform refers to Todayszaman.com.