Turkey on Tuesday began the construction of its first nuclear power plant, a controversial $20 billion project slammed by ecologists which Ankara hopes will begin a new era of greater energy self-sufficiency. The nuclear power station, in Akkuyu in Mersin province on the shores of the Mediterranean is being built, like Iran’s first nuclear power plant, by Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom. “Development cannot happen in a country without nuclear energy,” said Energy Minister Taner Yildiz.