The long shadow of Erdogan’s Turkey threatens to sink New York mayor’s political career

Turkey’s ambition to project an image as an emerging world power, independent and powerful in its region — what has been defined as Neo-Ottoman diplomacy, today attenuated by neighboring conflicts — now threatens to take down the mayor of New York himself, who has been accused of corruption. The geopolitical reasons that have tied together the interests of Ankara and the Big Apple, and those of the Islamist president Recep Tayyip Erdogan with those of the Democratic Mayor Eric Adams, is illustrated by the story of a 36-story skyscraper located right in front of the United Nations headquarters and housing the Turkish consulate in the so-called capital of the world.

The Turkish government had hoped to inaugurate the building, a glass and steel tower, in September 2021 during President Erdogan’s visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly, which represents the big week of international diplomacy. But the city’s Fire Department raised objections after finding more than 60 problems with the building’s fire protection system. The self-interested intercession of the future Mayor Adams — then still a candidate, but an authorized interlocutor, given his wide lead in the Democratic primaries — accelerated the permits and the inauguration ceremony took place on the scheduled date, September 20, 2021, with Erdogan cutting the ribbon with great fanfare. Three months later, Adams took up his seat inside the mayor’s office, a position he clings to today.

The $300 million building was the culmination of a dream that Erdogan had been cherishing for years. In theory, nothing could stop the show of force projected by the Turkish House, a modern skyscraper that replaced the previous consular building to house the diplomatic headquarters, offices of Turkish companies and a cultural center. In other words, it was meant as a monument to the growing global influence of the Eurasian country: for Erdogan, it was like staking out a claim in the heart of the West. So was, just a few months later, getting the United Nations to officially change the name of the country to Türkiye to avoid the homonym of its English name. But the dreams of grandeur were marred by numerous delays to the project — carried out by an American studio and a Turkish construction company — and in 2018 they hit a new hurdle: the Fire Department’s requirements got stricter, which in theory also delayed completion of the project and increased the budget costs.

How did Turkey get around the limitations? According to the prosecution, officials turned to the future mayor of the Big Apple, who at that point was Brooklyn borough president. In exchange for putting pressure on the Fire Department, Adams allegedly received numerous perks from the government and from Turkish entrepreneurs (business class flights, stays at luxury hotels and numerous campaign donations, including from unknown Turkish universities with campuses in Washington). This is according to the indictment, unveiled on September 26, and which accuses Adams of five federal crimes (wire fraud; conspiracy to commit wire fraud, solicit foreign contributions and accept bribes; bribery and two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national). The investigation has shaken the foundations of the mayor’s office: since early September, a dozen senior officials have resigned due to four parallel corruption investigations.

The implosion of New York City Hall could not have come at a worse time: there are local elections scheduled for next year, and Adams, who is reluctant to resign, is planning to run even if it is without a team or a budget: his campaign has barely managed to raise $190,000 in the last three months, when suspicions of corruption were rife, while his legal defense fund has received a single donation of $1,000 since the indictment. And with presidential elections right around the corner, the scandal is also affecting the Democratic Party in the largest city in the country.

That is why prominent party members, such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have called for Adams’ immediate resignation, as a kind of firewall. But Adams insists that he is ready to prove his innocence. And he is not only resisting, he is also exercising power by appointing replacements for those who recently stepped down, including the all-important New York Police Department Commissioner. The latest resignation to make the news was that the Health Commissioner is stepping down as well, “for personal reasons.” One of Adams’ most loyal advisors, with ties to China, resigned days ago.

A City adrift

Politically, New York City looks like a copy of the Flying Dutchman: a ship adrift. The mayor’s lawyers have tried to get the judge to dismiss the bribery charge, because “neither gratuities nor courtesies to politicians (sic) are federal crimes,” reads the defense brief. The Turkish Foreign Ministry responded to the scandal by assuring that its officials respect international law and diplomatic conventions. “We would not in any way interfere in the internal affairs of another country,” the ministry said in a statement. The statement referred specifically to the consul’s intercession in September 2021 to ensure that Adams would facilitate the inauguration of the building.

The negligence and free rein of builders and developers in Turkey largely explains the devastating ravages of earthquakes in that country, where buildings crumble like sand castles. But the laws of New York City were a guarantee of safety... until Adams burst onto the scene. His fall is reminiscent of former Democratic senator Robert Menendez, who in July was found guilty of corruption and influence peddling for receiving money from Egypt in exchange for favors.

But Adams also has a chain of unsavory friendships: an opaque network of patronage built around his political rise and made up, among others, of the two Banks brothers, whom the mayor referred to as if they were his own siblings and whom he appointed as Schools Chancellor and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety; both have resigned (one of them benefited a company to which he had ties with contracts worth $1.4 million). The wife of one of them is Sheena Wright, the First Deputy Mayor, who also resigned a week ago.

Apart from the brief statement from the Foreign Ministry, the Turkish government has responded to the controversy with silence. And curiously, it has found an ally in the opposition, which is usually ready to use such cases to attack Erdogan. Visiting New York to attend a meeting of the Socialist International, the head of the Turkish opposition, Özgür Özel, dismissed the accusations (“Turkey is not a country that needs to resort to bribes”) and said that the Turkish House is a building of which all Turks are “proud.” “If any gesture was made during the process of acquiring this building, we surely did more for the magnificent area that was granted to the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. This is not something that should be measured in terms of money; a strong alliance requires these things,” he said. These statements contrast with those of his predecessor, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, who went so far as to say that the prolonged construction of the Turkish House concealed the shadow of “money laundering,” which he linked to foundations with ties to the Erdogan family.

Over the past two decades, Erdogan has promoted numerous major infrastructure projects that have changed the face of the country and modernized it, but which, according to opposition critics, have also served to distribute income to large construction companies that are close to the government, which then help the party financially during election campaigns. According to former Turkish diplomats, few places outside Turkey attracted the president’s interest as much as New York, the epicenter of global finance and diplomacy. At the inauguration ceremony of the consulate, Erdogan said that the skyscraper reflected the nation’s “greatness, legacy and growing power.” Today, just on the opposite street corner, signs in the window of large business premises still under construction announce the upcoming opening, perhaps by chance, of a luxury establishment selling...Turkish delights.

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