Turkish government still unsure of massive blackout's cause

Energy Minister Taner Y?ld?z has said it is ?too early? to say the cause of the huge electricity blackout that left almost the whole of Turkey in darkness on March 31 was a cyber-attack, underlining that efforts are still ongoing to find its exact cause two days on.

?I spoke to five people who have been working at the Turkish Electricity Transmission Company [TE?A?] for 33 years. They told me that this was the first time they have ever seen something like this. It might have been due to a technical issue, but it is a huge coincidence for three huge malfunctions to happen at the same time and for the power plants to become disengaged,? Y?ld?z told reporters on April 2, on the sidelines of the 12th International Petrol, LPG and Technology Fair Petroleum in Istanbul

A massive power outage affected more than 76 million people in 80 out of 81 Turkish provinces for up to nine hours on March 31.

Y?ld?z?s latest assessment confirms daily Hürriyet?s April 1 report which said that the most likely explanation for the outage lays in ?a chain of failures started when a power plant in the Aegean region suddenly stopped production.?

Along with the Aegean power plants, the Atatürk hydroelectric dam in the southeast and a power plant in the southern region of Çukurova were also shut down.

Probability: 1/86,400

?Normally, the probability of experiencing three of these problems at the same time is just one in 86,400,? Y?ld?z said.

?It is too early for me to say this is a ?cyberattack? or even ?this is the reason why it happened.? It is too early to say what triggered the malfunction. Is a cyberattack out of the question? No it is not. We do not know yet whether this happened due to manipulation, or whether such an unlikely...