Nation wide power outage causes chaos in Turkey

Ankara, March 31: A massive power outage has hit many cities in Turkey on Tuesday due to a fault on power transmission lines, media reported citing Turkey's Electricity Transmission Company TEİAŞ 's statement.

Power stations and public transport, including Istanbul's tram and metro systems have been hit badly due to power outage, BBC reported.

A crisis centre has been set up at the energy ministry. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has been quoted as saying that all possibilities for power outage, including terror attack, being investigated.

The outage hit at 10:36 (07:36 GMT) on Tuesday morning.

By early afternoon the Turkish Electricity Transmission company said only 15% of Istanbul and Ankara had power. However, Turkish TV reported that power had been re-established in the cities of Edirne, Tekirdag, Erzurum and Trabzon.

Turkey suffers from sporadic electricity cuts but locals say they cannot remember such a nationwide outage for a generation.

One of the few cities unaffected by the outage was Van in the east of the country, where electricity is supplied from Iran.

Energy Minister Taner Yıldız has said teams are working to determine the cause of the blackout, ruling out claims that the country is suffering an energy shortage.

OneIndia News