BALTIMORE, Maryland April 1, 2014 - This isn't an April Fools-themed report. Amidst all of the charges of fraud in Turkey's elections, including serious charges of power outages at voting venues and at the places where votes were being counted, the Government responded today, at least in part, and they want everybody to know they are quite serious. They blame a cat.
Don't blink. You read it right. They blame a cat. Turkey's Energy Minister, Taner Yildiz, told the newspaper "Today's Zaman," “I am not joking, dear friends. A cat went into a transformer. Things like this have happened before the elections. It is wrong to connect this to the elections.” He said those looking for deliberate actions behind the power cuts were making excuses for their defeat.
A cat that went into an electrical transformer was responsible for at least one of the power cuts in 22 provinces on Sunday night during vote counting, Yıldız has said. Today's Zaman said this about the situation: "Allegations of election fraud have been rampant following Sunday's local elections, with users documenting many discrepancies between the numbers recorded at polling stations and those finally entered into the Supreme Election Board (YSK) system. Power blockages that occurred in 22 provinces on Sunday evening during the hours when the votes were being counted were also found to be suspicious by many. In response to critics' doubts, Energy Minister Yıldız said on Tuesday the blackouts were short-lived, temporary and not at the level that would have an effect on the vote total. “There were 10 or 15-minute cuts in some provinces and districts. Let us not hide behind electric lampposts.”
The paper added that Yildiz' statement "quickly became a joke for online users, with many sharing pictures of cats making statements about their transformer escapades."
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