What did Turkey and its powerful, globetrotting president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan get in return for the thousands of dollars in luxury, first-class travel, other lavish perks allegedly funneled to embattled Mayor Eric Adams?
According to the historic, five-count indictment unsealed by Manhattan prosecutors Thursday, Erdoğan scored a glossy, 36-story glass and steel tower across from the United Nations called the Turkish House that soars over the NYC skyline and the East River — a consular showplace allegedly fast-tracked by Adams despite fire safety concerns.
“In Sept. 2021 [a Turkish official] told Eric Adams, the defendant, that it was his turn to repay the Turkish official by pressuring the New York City Fire Department to facilitate the opening of a new Turkish consular building — a 36-story skyscraper — without a fire inspection, in time for a high profile visit by Turkey’s president,” the indictment read.
“At the time, the building would have failed an FDNY inspection. In exchange for free travel and travel-related bribes in 2021 and 2022 arranged by the Turkish official, Adams did as instructed.
“Because of Adams’ pressure on the FDNY, the FDNY official responsible for the FDNY’s assessment of the skyscraper’s fire safety was told he would lose his job if he failed to acquiesce, and after Adams intervened, the skyscraper was opened as requested.”
In 2017, just after construction began on what is also called the Turkevi Center, Erdogan presided over a ceremony at the site with his wife and his foreign minister.
“This new building will be a place worthy of our growing and developing country whose reputation is increasing in every field,” Erdogan said at the ceremony, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.
Turkevi House, he said, would symbolize a “space worthy of our country’s glory.”
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It was for Erdogan’s glory as well, according to Sinan Ciddi, an expert on Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“It was a total vanity project for Erdogan,” Ciddi told The Post Thursday. “There were all sorts of questions at the time about how they got those inspections done so quickly and now we know.
“For Erdogan it was a prestige thing – like look at what we manage to do even in NYC. He wanted a symbol of Turkey’s ascendancy in the world and he got it — and he got it when he wanted it.”
Perkins Eastman, the architectural firm that designed the building, calls it “a stunning addition to New York’s skyline [which] supports the Republic of Turkey’s US operations.”
The facade is curved in a homage to the crescent on the Turkish flag and the top of Turkish House is shaped like a tulip, the national flower of Turkey.
A 2021 report about the fire alarm system by the Dept. of Buildings viewed by The Post Thursday indicated a list of fire safety issues had still not been fixed to bring the building up to code.
A spokeswoman for the FDNY emailed The Post Thursday and said the fire alarm system in the building was approved in March 2023 but did not provide further details other than to say the building was “safe.”
A source familiar with the building’s construction told The Post that in 2021 he believed “there were significant problems with that building.”
Turkish House includes a passport and visa branch office, public areas, conference rooms, a multi-purpose prayer room, and auditorium as well as some residential units.
Turkish officials regularly hold diplomatic meetings in the building. Last September Erdogan invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Turkish House.
Turkish House was reportedly built by the Turkish billionaire Enver Yucel, a construction tycoon who doubles as the head of BAU Global, the umbrella education network which founded Bay Atlantic and Bahcesehir universities.
Among the Turks that seemed to directly benefit from Adams was former Turkish Airlines executive Cenk Ocal. He was ultimately named to Adams’ transition team after he became mayor in 2022 and Ocal eventually became Adams’ official liaison to the Turkish community.
Last November, on the same day the feds raided the house of Adams’ top fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, they also raided the homes of City Hall staffer Rana Abbasova, director of protocol in the Office for International Affairs, as well as Ocal’s home. Ocal was not named in the indictment against Adams.
