ANKARA (AFP) — Police detained 40 protestors Tuesday in a demonstration against government plans to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, a day before the tender process was to open, activists said.
Several dozen members of environmental groups, among them Greenpeace, demonstrated outside the energy ministry in central Ankara, brandishing banners that read “No to nuclear.”
Some of the protestors, dressed in black overalls and their faces painted white, lay on the ground posing as corpses.
Police officers detained about 40 people on the grounds that the demonstration was unauthorised, Greenpeace said.
Overriding strong opposition from environmentalists, the energy ministry has invited bids for the construction and operation of a 4,000-megawatt plant, to be built at Akkuyu, on Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast.
AFP: Anti-nuclear protestors detained in Turkey: Greenpeace.