ISTANBUL: A massive power cut caused chaos and shut down public transport across Turkey on Tuesday, with the government refusing to rule out that the electricity system had been the victim of an attack.

The nationwide power cut, the worst in 15 years, began shortly after 10:30 am (0730 GMT) in Istanbul, the state-run Anatolia news agency quoted the Turkey Electricity Transmission Company (TEIAS) as saying.

It was confirmed to have hit 49 of the country’s 81 provinces, from the Greek border to those in the southeast neighbouring Iran and Iraq, and including Istanbul and the capital Ankara.

Power was only fully restored across the country late in the evening, with the authorities still at a loss to explain the cause of the crisis.

“Every possibility, including a terrorist attack, is being investigated,” said Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu after the magnitude of the outage became clear.

He said a crisis cell has been established at the energy ministry to handle situation, which occurred as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was out of the country on a visit to Slovakia.

Energy Minister Taner Yildiz also said the authorities were investigating whether the power outage was due to a technical failure or a “cyber-attack.”

“The most important thing for us is to bring the system back to life. This is not something we frequently experience,” said Yildiz, who was travelling with Erdogan. He later sought to calm tensions, saying power had been restored throughout Turkey and an investigation launched into the cause.

“It is too early to say now if it is because of a technical reason, a manipulation, a foulplay, an operational mistake, or a cyber (attack). We are looking into it... We cannot say they are excluded possibilities.”

The energy ministry was quoted as saying by Turkish media that a power cut on this scale had not been seen in 15 years. The blackout trapped people in elevators while the metro systems in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir all stopped working for several hours.

Rescue teams rushed to subway stations to evacuate stranded travellers and bring them to ground level.

Traffic lights also were not working in several spots in Istanbul and Ankara, causing huge traffic jams, with officers taking to the streets in an attempt to break the logjams.

The Marmaray metro line which goes underneath the Bosphorus in Istanbul also went down while high speed train services from Ankara were also halted.—AFP