The Turkish Consulate, on First Avenue across from the U.N., cost nearly $300 million to build.
Photo: Richard Drew/AP
This week, the federal investigation into corruption in the Adams administration took a dramatic turn with the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams. We first got a clue into what the indictment might involve last November, when news broke that the FBI was investigating ties between the Adams administration and Turkey, centered around illegal campaign contributions from a Turkish-owned construction firm and Adams’s role in facilitating the opening of the new Turkish Consulate in time for the 2021 U.N. General Assembly.
This morning, the indictment itself was released: Adams is facing five federal charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. At the center of those charges is the Turkish Consulate, and specifically whether he pressured Fire Department officials to sign off on the consulate’s opening in September 2021 in exchange for bribes, despite “numerous” unresolved fire-safety issues.
Here’s everything we know about the Turkish Consulate and its ties to the Adams scandal.
The consulate, known as the Turkevi Center or Turkish House, is a 35-story skyscraper on First Avenue, across from the U.N. It’s a showy building and significantly taller than its predecessor, which was only about 11 stories high. It has a curving glass façade that, according to Perkins Eastman, the architecture firm that designed it, was “inspired in part by the Turkish crescent.” The tulip-shaped top, meanwhile, is a nod to the country’s national flower, and there are loggias at the upper floors that offer “expansive views of the East River, Long Island City, and Downtown Manhattan.” Like all consulates, it offers consular and visa services, hosts events, and has places for visiting diplomats to sleep, but there are also apartments, a prayer room, an exhibition space, and an auditorium. It cost nearly $300 million to build (a cost which was criticized within Turkey at the time, sparking protests by college students struggling with dorm fees) and is reportedly Turkey’s most expensive foreign mission, according to the Times. At its ribbon-cutting in 2021, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the building reflected Turkey’s “increased power.”
But the building faced numerous unresolved safety issues, some of them quite serious, in the months before its opening. That summer, a glass panel broke off the façade and fell ten stories, and around the same time, the FDNY rejected its first fire safety plan. Just three days before Erdogan was scheduled to speak at the building, a consultant reported that the building had serious issues with the sprinklers, elevators, smoke detectors, fans, and other elements that would need to function in the event of a fire.
Shortly after Adams won the Democratic primary in July 2021, all but guaranteeing he would be elected mayor in the fall, he reached out to the fire commissioner about the consulate’s opening. President Erdogan was eager to preside over the opening at the 2021 U.N. General Assembly, something that seemed increasingly unlikely given the unresolved fire-safety issues. Adams asked that the Turkish government be allowed to occupy the building, at least temporarily. In the end, the Fire Department gave the sign off, with guards on fire watch, so it could happen during Erdogan’s visit.
Asking officials or politicians to help a project jump the line in the Fire Department’s notoriously slow and onerous approval process was not in and of itself unusual, numerous developers told us last year. But while leaning on officials to get speedy sign-offs on safety issues that have been corrected is common, if Adams pressed the Fire Department to overlook safety issues at the consulate, rather than just getting its application to the top of the pile, that would be another thing altogether. (There is also the matter of bribery: The indictment alleges that Adams exerted pressure on Fire officials after a Turkish official told Adams that it was his turn to repay the gifts.) And according to the indictment, he did just that. The Fire Department official overseeing the building’s safety assessment was told he would lose his job if he did not follow the mayor’s order to make sure it opened in time for Erdogan’s visit. As of last November, the Times noted that the consulate was still open under a temporary certificate of occupancy.
Investigators claim that Adams received many benefits and perks, including luxury international travel with free and discounted Turkish Airlines tickets — even when he wasn’t traveling to Turkey — as well as free meals, “opulent” accommodations, and luxurious entertainment in Turkey, perks whose value exceeded $100,000. Adams tried to hide the gifts, made it appear that he had paid for them, and deleted messages relating to them, according to the indictment.
In the lead-up to the 2021 election, Adam also received illegal campaign contributions facilitated by a Turkish diplomat, according to the indictment. The contributions came via a straw donor scheme: KSK, a construction firm with ties to the Turkish government, hosted a fundraiser in May 2021 that netted a total of $69,720 from 84 donors, qualifying Adams for nearly the same amount in public funding. But many of the donations were for the exact same amount, multiple people who’d allegedly donated to the campaign said they hadn’t, and most had no history of campaign donations. The only employee who’d ever donated to a political campaign before was the firm’s owner, who hosted the fundraiser.
