Eric Adams once maintained friendly relations with a nonprofit Turkish Cultural Center in Brooklyn. As a state senator, he met with its executive director in Albany. He attended the group’s annual dinner gala. As Brooklyn borough president, he worked with the center to distribute 1,500 pounds of meat to food pantries.

But around 2016, he suddenly stopped associating with it.

By that year, Adams had started accepting free travel from groups tied to the Turkish government, according to a criminal indictment against the mayor brought last week by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. A senior Turkish diplomatic official told Adams that if he wanted to keep receiving those kinds of perks, he could no longer associate with the center, according to the indictment, which accuses Adams of bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions.

The reason for the ultimatum? The community center is dedicated to promoting the teachings of Fethullah Gülen, a cleric living in exile whom the Turkish government blames for fomenting an attempt to overthrow Turkey’s president in 2016. (Gülen has denied involvement.)

According to the indictment, Adams acquiesced.

More than 15,000 childcare providers across every county of New York were beneficiaries of the billions of federal dollars that President Joe Biden’s pandemic relief package injected into the industry. Childcare providers reported using the money to cover rent or pay worker wages, sustaining care for about 676,000 kids in the state.

“That helped us keep the doors open,” said Victor Vargas, a former teacher who operates a daycare out of his home in the South Bronx. His daycare, which has eight staff, benefitted from stabilization grants from the federal government as well as a workforce retention grant that the state set up using federal funds.

But the federal money ran out last September, leaving providers struggling with increasingly thin margins between their expenses and what parents can afford or state childcare subsidies will cover. Over the past year, 44 percent of New York childcare providers have raised tuition, and a third have lost staff, according to a new report from The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank, based on surveys and federal data.