Electricity outages that began on January 1 have left parts of Turkey’s southern Hatay province without reliable power for about a week, increasing hardship in one of the regions hardest hit by earthquakes in February 2023.
The outages began days after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Hatay on December 27 for a state event meant to showcase post-quake rebuilding, with his office and Turkish state media presenting the recovery as a major success.
Critics said the city was staged for the visit.
According to local media reports, streets along routes expected to be seen by officials and cameras were dressed up to project an image of prosperity, with fresh markings and cosmetic touches that critics said masked enduring marks of destruction.
The electricity failures have hit districts including Antakya, Defne and Samandağ, leaving residents trying to get through winter nights without heat, keep food from spoiling, charge phones and keep small businesses running. Some reports also describe water disruptions in neighborhoods where pumps rely on electricity.
The strain has been pronounced in a province still in recovery from the 2023 disaster.
Many families remain in container settlements or damaged neighborhoods as reconstruction continues. Long outages can be especially dangerous for older residents, people with chronic illness and households caring for relatives with injuries and other health problems tied to the earthquakes.
Some container-based family health clinics struggled to provide basic services during the outages, citing cold conditions and interrupted internet access that affected patient record systems.
The Energy and Natural Resources Ministry blamed a surge in demand during colder nights, saying heavy use of electric heaters overloaded parts of the distribution network. In a statement the ministry also said storm and snow damaged infrastructure in some districts and that crews were installing new transformers and boosting capacity in others. It said repairs were scheduled to be completed on January 7 in Antakya and Defne and on January 10 in Samandağ.
The outages also undercut recent messaging from the government.
Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum posted a video in late December saying Antakya’s “lights” would not go out, a line critics have pointed to as an example of promises that ring hollow for residents facing another breakdown in basic services.
Toroslar Electricity Distribution Company (Toroslar EDAŞ), which runs the local grid in Hatay and is part of Enerjisa Energy, also cited demand and said it was carrying out transformer installations, capacity increases and load-balancing work.
But the company’s public messaging has fueled anger.
In statements carried by Turkish media, Toroslar EDAŞ said inspections in parts of Samandağ found illegal or improper usage in about one in five homes. Residents and local outlets criticized that focus, arguing that it shifts responsibility onto people trying to keep warm in a province still rebuilding.
On Wednesday a local group in Defne called for a public gathering at 4 p.m. local time in front of an Enerjisa building to protest the continuing outages.
The Education and Science Workers Union (Eğitim Sen) in Samandağ filed a criminal complaint targeting the Turkish Electricity Distribution Corporation (TEDAŞ), arguing that prolonged outages harmed education and daily life.
Officials have not published a district-by-district breakdown showing how many subscribers were affected, how long outages lasted in each neighborhood or how much of the disruption was driven by weather damage versus capacity limits.