Massive Power Outage Paralyzes Turkey 57
wiredmikey writes: A massive power outage 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. Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said the authorities were investigating whether the power outage was due to a technical failure or cyber-attack. "It is too early to say now if it is because of a technical reason, a manipulation, a faultplay, an operational mistake, or a cyber (attack). We are looking into it... We cannot say they are excluded possibilities."
Re:Old news (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but they didn't have the power to get the word out sooner.
Re:Old news (Score:4, Interesting)
Big sign of incompetence if they don't even know where to look for the problem after 12 hours.
Gobble gobble?? (Score:1, Funny)
Great... Now how will we have Thanksgiving???
I knew it! (Score:1)
It's those pesky Canadian drones. [slashdot.org] They should regulate those better.
Occams Razor: Bad Infrastructure (Score:3, Insightful)
There was never in the history of mankind a power outage because of a cyber attack. So why this propaganda spin of a possible cyber attack?
Most likely it was because of a grid on its limits, combined with a minor/medium failure in a transmission line/power station.
Re: (Score:3)
Which in turn is even cooler than what typically happens in reality - underinvestment in basic infrastructure such as power grid.
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So why this propaganda spin of a possible cyber attack?
What leader wants to admit that the problem is crummy infrastructure? It's basically admitting that they're bad at their job or too incompetent to keep things maintained properly.
Blame it on something that can't really be proven definitively and it takes the heat off.
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A smart leader does. It was brought about by chronic underfunding in the infrastructure by the previous governments even though we told them that this would happen while we were in opposition.
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Considering Erdoan has been in power for 12 years, blaming it on previous governments would be rather laughable.
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In Canada Harper has been in power for over 6 six and he still does it, especially when it comes to the Defence Department and the environment.
Paralyzesd Turkey? (Score:1)
Gobble Gobble!
How long until Erdogan... (Score:3)
...blames his opponents, the officer corps, or some expatriate mullah hiding in America for this?
Or pays his cronies billions to "fix" the grid?
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I'm sure he'll blame America for it, right after he starts screaming it's a zionist conspiracy and the Jews did it.
I wonder what this means... (Score:2)
The Turks are fully capable of running a power grid that's reliable so something tells me that there is a lot more to this story than we are being told. It's not like Turkey is the crown jewel of stability and democracy of the middle east or anything. Somebody did this on purpose and it is NOT easy to take down a power grid in a country. You can do small parts of a country, a few towns, maybe a city pretty easily, but a whole country? That's something that will take either some incredible luck or a signi
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It's easy, Turkey has been clamping down on jihadis moving through their country to join the conflict in and around Syria. Knock out the power grid for any significant length of time, and it would help people either enter or leave the country (or some of both), assuming they aren't using mass transit.
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Come on, it's premature to blame it on Sasquatch
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Turkey -- a Sunni Muslim country -- has always had a strained relationship with many of the other Middle East countries (many of which are Shiite Muslim). Turkey has also been buying millions of dollars worth of oil from ISIS each day -- a way to get cheap oil, and a way to support a group that is also Sunni Muslim.
So I have to wonder if another nation has done this to punish Turkey?
Re:I wonder what this means... (Score:5, Informative)
Turkey is no longer what you sarcastically try to claim it is. Edrogan is actively working to turn that country back into the Ottoman shithole it was by eroding the very democracy and secular principles that's made it strong. He's destroyed the independent judiciary. He's about 80% destroyed local governments and NGOs and he's begun the press and free association clamp down. Free speech has also been targeted, directly and indirectly and he's putting religion back into the public school with state control and corruption is rampant.
By the time he's dead Turkey is going to be the same Islamic shithole the rest of the middle east is. Free thinking and acting people don't show proper "respect" to the theology and that can't be allowed. All over the middle east secular leaders and advocates are being murdered (often without consequences for the murderer) publicly and often very violently. Once the people that favor a secular government are scared into silence the Imams can make a directly play for power and take their seat at the head of society, as the believe they are entitled. Turkey is rapidly moving in this direction and it won't be long before people speaking out for secular principles are jailed or murdered for insulting either the leadership or Islam. It's already illegal to "insult" Erdogan.
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The King of Jordan once said of Erdogan (I paraphrase) "democracy is like a bus to Erdogan, once he reaches his destination, he's going to get off." That pretty much sums up what a whore Erdogan is deep, down in his black little heart.
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Contrary to personal experience (Score:1)
I've found that you generally need massive amounts of power to paralyze a turkey.
At least a few hundred Watts.
More if you want the center at an edible 160F by dinnertime.
Re: (Score:2)
You'll do better to cut it up and cook the breasts for less time than the legs.
Re: (Score:2)
You'll do better to cut it up and cook the breasts for less time than the legs.
That's not nearly as photogenic though.
Re: (Score:2)
No. She said "What the hell are you planning to do with that knife?"
Coincidence? (Score:2)
This is on the heels of a stand-off that lead to the death of the Prosecutor who didn't punish cops that killed a 15 year old protestor a year ago. One can't help but wonder if this "power outage" was a ham-fisted attempt at controlling the spread of news and stifling the people's ability to communicate and organize.
http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
Re: Coincidence? (Score:1)
This just in (Score:2)
Massive Power Outage Paralyzes Turkey
Chicken unaffected.
Don't Worry ! (Score:1)
It's just the NSA doing a firmware "upgrade" on some of their routers :D
Things should be back to normal soon.
I Know! (Score:2)
I am not surpriced (Score:2)
I has been about 6-7 years since I was in Turkey. The hotel I was staying at was a regular 3 star hotel. They had a backup generator in the back alley which they seemed to share with the neighbor hotel.
The power would go out once or twice every day, mostly only for half an hour. Sometimes in the middle of the night by noise from the generator and my AC starting again.
When I arrived late at night at the hotel, I noticed that the power distribution boxes were quite hot when you was leaning against them. Also