The Turkish government was already years behind schedule erecting a 35-story tower in Manhattan when it hit a roadblock at the New York City Fire Department. Turkish officials learned in 2018 that fire department requirements had changed and they would need to update building plans, costing them more time and more money.
“Likely the folks in the [Turkish] ministry are amazed that you can’t just hand the NYC FD guys a few lira and make this problem go away,” Phillip Infelise, a project manager, emailed a colleague. The email surfaced in a 2021 lawsuit Turkey filed against the tower’s architect.
But the rules in Turkey are not the same in America, Infelise explained, according to a deposition he gave last year. “And we had to inform them that that’s not the way business is done in New York City to our knowledge,” he said.
Not exactly. Federal prosecutors now say Turkish officials eventually found someone else to make its problems with the Fire Department go away: the incoming mayor.
Late last month, a grand jury indicted Mayor Eric Adams on an array of corruption charges related to gifts he allegedly accepted from a Turkish official and businessmen, including free flights on a Turkish airline and luxury hotel stays. Partly in exchange for the goodies, prosecutors allege, Adams pressured fire department officials to sign off on the building’s safety despite their concerns.
Now, the nearly $300 million Turkish House that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan intended to be a monument to his nation’s global influence is likely to loom even larger in a legal drama that might cost the New York mayor his job and perhaps his political career.
Adams has pleaded not guilty. A week ago, his lawyers asked a federal judge to dismiss a bribery charge . “Gratuities are not federal crimes. Courtesies to politicians are not federal crimes,” his lawyer, Alex Spiro , said at a news conference that day.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has said that its employees abide by international law and diplomatic conventions. “There is no way in which we would interfere in the internal affairs of another country,” the spokesman told state news agency Anadolu.
Prosecutors alleged that in September 2021, Turkey’s consul general in New York, Reyhan Ozgur, asked Adams and one of his staffers, in phone calls and electronic messages, to clear the path for opening the Turkish House in time for an opening ceremony to coincide with Erdogan’s address to the United Nations. Adams wasn’t yet mayor then, but he had won the Democratic primary, all but guaranteeing he would win the general election.
An inspector for the fire department, however, had refused to sign off, noting more than 60 defects to the building’s fire readiness. Ozgur called one of Adams’s staffers and said it was “his turn” to support Turkey, according to the indictment. She relayed the message to Adams.
“I know,” Adams responded, according to the indictment. He pressed the fire department to make an exception, prosecutors said, and days later Turkish officials got what they wanted: The tower opened for Erdogan’s arrival. At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Erdogan said the tower reflected his nation’s “greatness, legacy and growing power.”
Erdogan’s building projects, including his nation’s biggest mosque, began to transform Istanbul in the mid-2000s. Former Turkish officials said there were few places abroad where the Turkish leader wanted to project strength more than in New York, a financial hub and center of international diplomacy.
Since the late 1970s, the Turkish Center, a bland, 11-story office building across First Avenue from the U.N., had served as Turkey’s New York City consulate and U.N. mission. The building, purchased from IBM, survived a terrorist bomb blast in 1980. In the 2000s, though, the leaders of the increasingly prosperous nation felt they had outgrown it.
“The rugs were a bit torn, and the furniture wasn’t in very good condition,” recalled Faruk Logoglu, a former Turkish diplomat and former member of his country’s parliament.
An ambitious plan emerged: Tear down the old Turkish Center and a neighboring building and replace them with a glass tower three times as high overlooking the U.N.—something prime minister and future president Erdogan believed could showcase the country’s growing clout on the world stage.
It was supposed to take three years. Building it turned into a problem-plagued ordeal that dragged on for about a decade.
Presidential deadline
In 2012, Turkey hired a project manager, Chicago-based Cresa, to oversee the demolition of the existing buildings and the construction of the new one. New York-based architectural firm Perkins Eastman signed on as the designer.
Renderings prepared by Perkins Eastman showed a curving facade inspired by the crescent in the center of the Turkish flag. The design incorporated the kinds of ornate patterns seen in caravansaries, the medieval inns that hosted merchants traveling the Silk Road. Offices for the consulate and Turkish businesses would occupy the tower, along with 20 residential units for diplomatic staff, a fitness center, outdoor terraces, an auditorium and a prayer room.
The project was soon mired in delays, and the costs mounted rapidly. The existing Turkish consulate was vacated by 2013 to make way for the new project, forcing Turkey’s diplomats to work out of a rented space in Midtown Manhattan. That cost the Turkish state $5 million a year. Yet, demolition work hadn’t even started yet.
“The ongoing uncertainties regarding the Turkish House project are increasing the costs of the project as well as hitting Turkey’s reputation in the U.S.,” wrote Logoglu, the former diplomat who had become an opposition politician, in a parliamentary motion in 2015.
In 2016, Cresa, the U.S. project manager, threatened to walk away from the project after its contract expired, according to a lawsuit Turkey filed against the company back then. But Cresa and Turkey made amends, and demolition work began the next year.
Progress was far slower than imagined. By the start of 2021, the construction team was given a firm deadline: Everything needed to be done by the U.N. General Assembly meeting that September. Infelise, a Cresa employee who has worked on the project for years, said in a 2023 deposition that the order came from Erdogan himself. Erdogan’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Infelise said builders initially estimated it might cost only a few million dollars more to meet the deadline. But cost increases were also coming in from Turkish company IC Ictas, which in partnership with American company Aecom Tishman, was handling the construction, according to the depositions of Infelise and another Cresa employee.
IC Ictas, owned by Turkish businessman Ibrahim Cecen , had overseen some of Turkey’s landmark government projects, including a nuclear power plant and one of the massive bridges across the Bosporus, which divides Europe and Asia.
The original design had been modified, including to create more space for things like equipment storage and a vehicle elevator. Infelise and the other Cresa employee said in their depositions that they expressed concerns to Turkish officials that IC Ictas and Aecom were charging an unusually large markup for changes to the construction plan.
Aecom Tishman declined to comment, and IC Ictas didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Turkish officials didn’t reject the changes or added charges, the two Cresa employees said in their depositions. Later, Turkey blamed some of the rising costs on the architect, Perkins Eastman, which it sued after the building was completed.
Perkins Eastman denied Turkey’s claims.
Turkish officials first approached the future mayor in 2015, the year after he was elected Brooklyn Borough President. Prosecutors alleged that Adams took two trips to Turkey that year, one of them paid for by the Turkish consulate in New York and an educational conglomerate based in Istanbul. Adams met the New York general manager of partly government-owned Turkish Airlines, from whom he would receive luxury travel benefits for years, the indictment said.
“Turkish Airlines is my way of flying,” Adams later said in an interview with a Turkish news website.
It was the beginning of an almost decadelong relationship during which Adams allegedly received more than $100,000 worth of gifts, including stays in luxury hotel suites and at a seaside resort, business-class airline travel, a yacht tour and a personal car and driver while in Turkey.
In the summer of 2017, Adams went on tours of France, China and Turkey, including a stay at the “Bentley Suite” at the St. Regis Hotel in Istanbul. Prosecutors estimated the value of those trips alone at more than $41,000.
They also alleged that Adams received illegal campaign contributions from Turkish businesspeople who sought to benefit from Adams’s growing political power.
‘True friend of Turkey’
By 2021, all the problems erecting the Turkish House had been surmounted but one: getting the Fire Department to sign off on the new building.
By that September, inspectors had identified more than 60 defects to the tower’s fire readiness, including systems that alert emergency responders to fire risks and shut down fans if a fire breaks out. Decades earlier, a fire at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino had killed 87 people, in large part because of malfunctioning fans circulating toxic fumes to higher floors.
“I do not see any way we would be willing to accept it,” an FDNY employee charged with inspecting the fire-alarm system wrote to the city’s fire prevention chief on Sept. 9, less than two weeks before the deadline Erdogan set for opening the building.
The next day, according to the indictment, Adams messaged the Fire Department commissioner about Turkey’s problems getting final signoff.
Later that day, the department’s top uniformed officer—called the chief of department—told another top official, the fire prevention chief, that if they didn’t help the Turkish government, they would both lose their jobs, according to the indictment.
The Fire Department drew up the necessary documents and Adams relayed the good news to the Turkish consul general: The building was free to open.
“You are a true friend of Turkey,” Ozgur, Turkey’s consul general, replied in a text that included two folded-hands emojis, according to the indictment.
Turkey remained far from satisfied, though, with the nearly $300 million cost of the project. Turkey sued Perkins Eastman, alleging their poor design work had cost them delays and at least $13 million.
The architectural firm disputed the allegation. When Perkins Eastman asked the Turkish government to produce documents buttressing its claims, it declined, citing “consular privileges and immunities.” It said Cresa, its American project manager, had all relevant documents.
In their ensuing depositions, Cresa employees said some construction review decisions were made at meetings among Turkish officials in Ankara.
Turkey dropped its lawsuit earlier this year.
Days before the Turkish House’s grand opening on Sept. 20, the mayor asked an aide to arrange a flight to Pakistan.
“He’ll pay the economy class price,” the aide told the manager of Turkish Airlines, according to prosecutors. “Can we upgrade later?” undefined undefined “Of course,” the airline manager replied.
Write to Will Parker at will.parker@wsj.com , Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com and Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com
