Drama in north Cyprus power station on Thursday night as Union leader arrested, accused of assaulting Prime Minister

It was a night of drama in north Cyprus on Thursday night when Ahmet Tugcu,, the leader of the TRNC’s electricity authority Kib-Tek’s employees’ trade union El-Sen, was arrested resulting in chaos over late-night attempts to fix faulty machinery at the Teknecik power station near Kyrenia.

According to report, the TRNC’s ‘government’ had late Thursday night ordered workers from Turkish private energy company Aksa to enter the publicly run Teknecik power station to fix longstanding faults.

However, El-Sen has long objected to Aksa’s involvement in the north’s power supply, and particularly what they perceive as growing efforts to increase Aksa’s presence at Teknecik and on the publicly run side of the TRNC’s grid.

As a result, when the Aksa workers arrived at Teknecik on Thursday night, they found the power station’s entrance blocked by El-Sen members.

The Aksa workers were then joined by ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel, who earlier on Thursday had held a meeting at Teknecik with Kib-Tek board members and local police, after which he raised the possibility of the power station being “sabotaged”.

“Never in history has so much black smoke come out of steam turbines. Never in history have five generators stopped and malfunctioned at once,” he said, adding that the police would be launching an investigation into the matter.

When Ustel arrived at Teknecik on Thursday night, there was a face-to-face confrontation between him and high-ranking members of El-Sen, though there are conflicting stories as to what happened.

A video taken by El-Sen member Huseyin Peksever, which has circulated on social media throughout the night and on Friday morning, appears to show Ustel shouting at Tugcu, “I will pull the rug from under you”.

Meanwhile, newspaper Yeni Duzen reported that Ustel had at some point during the confrontation shouted, “I will finish you, you bastard!” before telling police to “arrest this bastard”.

Newspaper Kibris reported that Tugcu had physically assaulted Ustel, though the fact that he was released so quickly after his arrest suggests this is unlikely to have been the case.

Tugcu was arrested following the altercation, with Ustel then making an impromptu speech to reporters, asking, “is it a coincidence that five generators broke down at the same time?

“We assigned our colleagues to investigate the outages’ cause. They could not find a solution. We took action today … The necessary parts were supplied. Our colleagues requested reinforcement. We received reinforcement from Aksa. [Tugcu] came here and saw this. He did not let the Aksa team in. Our concern is our people,” he said.

He added that the police would investigate any possibility of “sabotage”, and once again raised the question of why El-Sen had not allowed Aksa workers to enter the power station.

“What is the intention behind this? I will leave the answer to my people,” he said.

He said work had since started on repairs to the generators and said they should be complete by 7am, adding that “we will be here until the morning if necessary.”

Tugcu was released by the police in the early hours of Friday morning, three hours after his initial arrest, saying upon his release that “I was held for three hours so Unal Ustel would be happy.”

He added that no charges had been brought against him, and that his arrest had been aimed at “calming the situation down”.

Opposition party CTP leader Tufan Erhurman then arrived on the scene, calling on Ustel to “either prove your claim of ‘sabotage’ or resign.

“You are responsible for proving the claim. Whoever committed the sabotage will pay the price, but if there is no sabotage, there is only one price that can be paid; you will pay for it, you will resign and you will leave,” he said.

He then added, “we saw that the person who holds the office of prime minister called someone a bastard”.

Cyprus Mail