A deal that Turkey signed with Russia to build the country's first nuclear power plant "awakes the nuclear nightmare of the Eastern Mediterranean," four branches of Greenpeace and Friends of Earth said in a joint statement.

"Nuclear energy has no place at all in our neighborhood," it said.

Under the accord signed earlaier this month, Russia will build the plant at Akkuyu, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

"The building of a nuclear power plant... near an active (seismic) faultline constitutes an act that is contrary to basic safety rules," the statement said.

The plant would damage the ecosystem in an area which is home to one of the last colonies of a highly endangered species of Mediterranean monk seal, it said.

The project also "contravenes with a series of Directives of the European Union" which Turkey is seeking to join, it added.

Turkey plans to build three nuclear power plants in a bid to prevent a possible energy shortage and to reduce dependence on foreign supplies.

An earlier plan to build a nuclear plant at Akkuyu was scrapped in 2000 amid a severe financial crisis and protests from environmentalists.

Critics say Akkuyu is close to a seismic faultline, pointing at a powerful earthquake that killed more than 140 people in the neighbouring province of Adana in 1998.

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