NYC Mayor Eric Adams’ 2021 campaign reportedly received $6,000 from three contributors who serve on the board of an organization supported by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son.
According to campaign records examined by The New York Post, the gifts were made between 2018 and 2021 by three US-citizen board members of the Turken Foundation, a group established by Erdogan’s son Bilal – and where Esra Albayrak, the Turkish leader’s daughter, is one of the board’s eleven current members.
Behram Turan, the chair of the foundation, made a $3,000 payment; however, the Adams campaign later refunded $1,000 since the amount exceeded the contributor cap, as per the documents that the City first revealed.
Memis Yetim, the treasurer of the board, contributed an additional $1,000. Her address on campaign papers was the nonexistent “Staten Island, NJ.” Finally, it appears that a third contributor donated $2,000 as well.
The donors are volunteers for the Turken Foundation, whose mission is to house Turkish students studying in the US. On the campaign filings, however, they did not name the organization as an employment.
Furthermore, two board members of the Turkish American Steering Committee (TASC), which was formerly co-run by an associate of Erdogan’s political party, contributed a total of $12,600 to Adams’ campaign. Due to donation restrictions, the campaign subsequently refunded more than $8,000, reportedly because the donors failed to disclose their affiliation with TASC on their donation forms.
This occurs while federal investigators are still examining whether Adams’ mayoral campaign accepted illicit payments from the Turkish government as a component of a purported kickback scheme.
According to law enforcement officials, one of the investigation’s main concerns is if the campaign colluded with the Turkish government and the Brooklyn-based KSK Construction Group to unlawfully transfer money from abroad into his campaign accounts in exchange for favors.
“There is nothing in the documentation or information provided to the campaign by contributors that indicated a connection to the Turken Foundation or the Turkish American Steering Committee,” Vito Pitta, an attorney for the Adams campaign, told The Post.
