Turkish Pm Says All Possibilities For Power Outage Being İnvestigated

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has said officials are inspecting all possible causes, including a terror attack, for the electricity cut across Turkey, as power blackouts continue in several provinces including Istanbul and Ankara.

Almost in all provinces throughout Turkey are affected by the outage, except Van, the only province importing electricity power from neighbouring Iran.

A technical problem in the system of the Turkish Electricity Transmission Company (TEİAŞ), which operates energy transmission lines, led to the massive outage, officials said.

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.

"I also cannot say whether or not there was a cyber attack" Yıldız said.

Davutoğlu has said "all possibilities" including a terror attack, were being investigated.

The Energy Ministry has also released a statement, saying a problem has occured with the main distribution lines and the cut is likely to have originated in the Aegean region.

In the western province of Kocaeli, one of the industrial centers of Turkey, several factories stopped production in the morning as most of the province was affected by the blockout.

Meanwhile, the hashtag #BuradaElektrikYok, which means "There is no electricity" in Turkish, climbed to the top of the global trending topics list on Twitter March 31. - Istanbul