• Lack of reasonable explanation for power cut leads to conspiracy theories
    http://www.todayszaman.com/business_lack-of-reasonable-explanation-for-power-cut-leads-to-conspira

    The failure of government officials to provide a reasonable explanation for the cause of an electricity outage that plunged the country into a three-hour-long blackout on Tuesday has paved the way for several conspiracy theories, with some arguing that Turkey was targeted by cyber or terrorist attacks and others claiming that Turkey was left out of the European power network.

    The lack of consonance in public statements made by officials, nevertheless, calls into question Turkey’s ability to manage crises, as the panicked atmosphere across the country has sparked several conspiracy theories. Apart from allegations of cyber or terrorist attacks, some said Turkey was excluded from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) after its failure to handle small problems in electricity transmission on Tuesday. Emre Metin, the head office manager of the Chamber of Electrical Engineers (EMO) said: “Turkey’s electrical network is connected to the ENTSO-E. But Turkey was recently warned by [officials in] Europe. If the country was left out of the European network, some power stations might have been disabled. This would be a technical problem and could take a long time to fix.”

    The other allegation was made by scores of people on social media and government whistleblower Fuat Avni, who launched a Twitter war on Wednesday about the outage. Fuat Avni said the president and his supporters deliberately cut the electricity in order to normalize national power outages ahead of the general election slated to be held in June so as to engage in vote rigging after a power cut on election night. The informer argued Turkey will go through two more cuts until elections and experience the forth one on the night of the election. He recalled outages that occurred during the controversial local elections last year, which were plagued by several media reports saying power was cut in at least 22 provinces across the country during vote counting at schools where ballot boxes were being guarded. At the time, the energy minister said a cat that went into an electrical transformer was responsible for the power cuts in at least one of those 22 provinces during vote counting.

    #Black-Out #Turquie #Complot