Want more reporting from THE CITY? Sign up for Scoop, our free weekday newsletter, to have our latest news delivered right to your inbox.The Turkish Cultural Center in Sheepshead Bay was a regular stop on Eric Adams’ community circuit for years, including into his first term as Brooklyn borough president.Adams attended multiple events in association with and hosted by the center, as far back as 2012 when he was a state senator. As borough president, Adams co-hosted a meat drive for food pantries with the center. And he attended the center’s annual “friendship dinner” in 2016.But Adams didn’t make the event in 2017. Something happened in between. The indictment of Adams by U.S. Attorney Damian Williams alleges that Adams took travel benefits arranged by a Turkish official — and in exchange granted political favors. According to the indictment, Adams had been connected with a Brooklyn-based Turkish community center affiliated with a political movement opposed to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But in 2016, a Turkish official allegedly told Adams he should cut ties with the center if he wanted to keep receiving support from the government. “Adams acquiesced,” the indictment says.Mayor Eric Adams attends a Jewish high holidays security presser at One Police Plaza, Oct. 2, 2024. Credit: Jason Scott Jones for THE CITYTwo people who were involved with the Turkish Cultural Center in Brooklyn said they didn’t know why Adams stopped associating with the cultural center until they read the indictment. (The sources were granted anonymity because they are part of the opposition movement to Erdogan and their families in Turkey could be in danger.)“I was surprised to learn he stopped talking to our community members after he got a request or order from the Turkish regime,” said one of the people, referencing Erdogan. “It was shocking news for us.”That person said the organization didn’t have much communication with Adams since about 2016 and that an outreach coordinator could not get a response from Adams’ office around that time.He added, “We thought he was our friend.”A third person involved with the center said back in 2016 he had tried to warn Adams that those associated with the Turkish regime were trying to influence him. Adams waved him off, he said.“A lot of elected officials were actually informed by the Turkish government supporters, but only Eric Adams stayed away from us. The others continued their relationship with us,” the person said. “As the Brooklyn borough president, when he wasn’t meeting with us any more, it was a little bit disappointing to us.”Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for the mayor, referred requests for comment to Adams’ lawyer Alex Spiro, who did not respond.Gulen MovementThe Turkish Cultural Center aligns itself with the Gulen movement, which was founded by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen in the 1960s and encourages Turkish Muslims at home and abroad to embrace secular education and assimilate into non-Muslim society while remaining true to traditional tenets of Islam. The movement places a strong emphasis on interfaith dialogue and connection and has founded schools across the globe that are inspired by Gulen’s teachings. It also regularly attempts to make allies of political leaders. The Turkish Cultural Center reached out to current Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso after running into him at the Democratic National Convention this summer, but no one scheduled a follow-up meeting, according to a spokesperson for Reynoso. Members of the Gulen movement —including those based in Sheepshead Bay — made political donations in Congressional races, and groups associated with the movement paid for hundreds of trips to Turkey for Congressional members and staff.And members of the Gulen movement have for years faced political persecution.“Erdogan’s government is engaged in a wide-ranging multinational effort to target anyone affiliated with the movement,” said Nicholas Danforth, a fellow at Century International who studies Turkey. “They’ve actually put pressure on local governments to do extraordinary rendition or illegally deport members of the movement that they’re trying to target. So in that context, the fact that once they were bribing an American official, they’d want to make sure he had no contact whatsoever with any Gulen-affiliated organization — makes total sense.”Those associated with the Gulen movement weren’t always on the outs with the government.“When they were in the driver’s seat politically they were happy to help Erdogan perpetrate the same types of injustices against their enemies,” Danforth said.In 2013, Danforth said, the movement had a falling out with Erdogan, and some members of the Gulen movement attempted a coup against the regime in 2016. Since then, Turkey has considered the movement a terrorist organization and has targeted the movement. (Gulen denied any connection to the coup, and has been living in Pennsylvania in self-imposed exile since 1999.)As one source associated with the Turkish Cultural Center put it: “There’s a witch hunt all around the world against our movement and members by Erdogan’s regime.”The Turkish Consulate in New York did not return requests for comment.Councilmember Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island) said he was harassed at campaign stops and public appearances because he attended events, like Iftar dinners, hosted by the Turkish Cultural Center Staten Island. A person he said is supportive of the Turkish regime distributed fliers calling him a “terrorist supporter.”“It’s been a recurring joke among my political friends,” Borelli said.Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom, who has criticized the Erdogan regime, told News Nation he believed Adams ghosted him at the behest of the Turkish government. The two had met at an awards ceremony in Greece in 2022 and exchanged numbers in the hopes of organizing a basketball camp in New York. Freedom said that when he reached out to the mayor, he never heard back — which is what his friends associated with the Turkish Cultural Center had told him to expect, he said.Silence on Armenian GenocideOutside of those affiliated with the Gulen movement, there’s another group of New Yorkers that Adams allegedly neglected as part of his close relationship with the Turkish government: Armenians.In April 2022, a Turkish official urged one of Adams’ staffers — revealed to be Rana Abbasova — to confirm that the mayor would not make a statement acknowledging the Armenian genocide on the upcoming Armeninan Genocide Remembrance Day, according to the indictment. The staffer responded that the mayor would not, and Adams did not make a statement. “At the end of the day, my peoples’ existence and welfare and their dignity is worth a couple of flights to Istanbul,” said Armenian-American political organizer and former Assembly candidate in uptown Manhattan Julien Segura. “That’s the value of it to some of these politicians. It’s soul-crushing.” Segura said he reached out to Adams’ scheduler earlier this year to invite the mayor to an Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day event, but received no response. Chantelle Nasri, the chair of the New York Branch of the Armenian National Committee, said that she had sent the mayor letters asking him to make a statement recognizing the Armenian genocide. A Brooklyn resident, Nasri hoped that her former borough president would listen to his constituents. She, too, never heard back.“The silence from his office makes a lot more sense now,” Nasri said.When the indictment was unsealed, Khatchig Mouradian, a lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University who studies denial of the Armenian genocide, had already made note of Adams’ recent closeness with Turkish officials.“Once you notice that, it’s almost a given that this is what’s going to come next,” he said. “For the Turkish government — for more than a century now, but certainly over the past century — it has been a very important foreign policy issue.”Contrary to broad academic consensus, the Republic of Turkey denies that a genocide took place against the Armenians in 1915. “The Turkish state spends tremendous amounts of resources and pressure, political pressure, in order to suppress any kind of acknowledgement or commemoration of the Armenian genocide,” Mouradian said. “And for the past several decades, it keeps blowing up in their faces, and I think this is a good example of that.”American politicians have not always officially recognized the Armenian genocide, partially in an attempt to preserve relations with Turkey, which is a NATO member and U.S. ally. In 2015, New York State recognized April 24 as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, and President Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to make a statement about the genocide in 2021.Segura is galvanizing support for mayoral, comptroller, and City Council candidates in 2025 to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again. “I am very focused on making sure the Democrats who are coming in show some love to the Armenian community, because we’ve been here for a long time and we deserve our due respect,” he said. “Like anybody should.” Our nonprofit newsroom relies on readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. DONATE to THE CITY The post Eric Adams Ghosted Brooklyn’s Turkish Cultural Center in 2016. Its Staff Now Understand Why. appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.First published by THE CITY – NYC News.