Turkey suffered a manufacturing shutdown after problems with the country’s gas supplies forced the state to impose electricity cuts on industry.
Tofas, a Turkish carmaker part-owned by Fiat Chrysler, was among those announcing a halt in production on Monday, according to Turkish media, after the government said it would impose three days of power cuts on heavy industrial users this week. Others included Renault’s joint venture, which said it would halt production at its factory in Bursa, in the west of the country, for 15 days from Monday.
The outages, which risk stoking Turkey’s already soaring inflation and hitting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s export targets, come after Iran — which provides around 10 per cent of Turkey’s natural gas — last week announced that it would temporarily suspend gas exports to its neighbour because of technical problems.