Welcome to Greedy Genset Giants. Our shiny series debut, where we follow Cummins into the data-centre gold rush and point at the real trick.

They don’t “power progress”. They power continuity. They keep the lights on for whatever institution is nearest the money, no matter how rancid the public record smells. Diesel doesn’t care if the customer is respectable. Diesel cares if the invoice clears.

Today’s customer: Turkcell, Turkey’s telecom titan. A company that sells “connection” while dragging a history that reads like a hotel carpet under blacklight.

Cummins In The Basement, Ethics In The Bin

Turkcell’s business model is uptime. Towers. hubs. data centres. The modern altar where everything sacred is stored, including your life, your location, and whatever else you didn’t realise you were donating to the corporate gods.

And when the grid coughs, Turkcell doesn’t pray. It fires up Cummins.

Cummins Turkey has publicly celebrated installing 13 generator sets at Turkcell’s Izmir data centre. Not “a couple of backups”. A proper diesel nursery. Cummins says it delivered a turnkey install for 13 sets with CFD analysis and site-specific engineering. The whole warm embrace. The message is simple: We will keep your empire breathing even if your reputation flatlines.

That’s the Greedy Genset Giants model. Cummins doesn’t just sell machines. It sells permission. It sells “uninterrupted” to customers who’ve earned interruption.

The Turkcell Smile: Soft Focus, Hard Rot

Turkcell’s marketing is glossy and clean. Big smiles. Big claims. Big “innovation” energy.

Then you look at the record and it’s like peeling tape off skin. Ownership brawls. Governance chaos. Corruption fog. Data breaches and customer panic. Associations that make your stomach tighten. The kind of recurring mess that always ends with the same punchline: nobody senior ever seems to suffer. Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

And yet the whole machine keeps humming because Cummins is downstairs, quietly doing what it does best: keeping the cash-generating organs alive while the body rots.

Ownership Bloodsport: A Telecom Held Hostage

Turkcell spent years as a corporate hostage situation dressed up as “shareholder structure”. A long-running brawl involving heavyweight stakeholders and enough court time to make a judge weep.

These aren’t cute boardroom disagreements. This was control, dividends, seats, leverage. Governance by knife fight. The kind of dysfunction that doesn’t just “create uncertainty” – it infects decision-making, investment, oversight, and the basic idea that anyone is steering the damn ship.

The world got to watch major players yank at the wheel while the company lurched on, serving millions of customers like it was all perfectly normal.

And through that entire period, while the suits were busy trying to win the company like it was a poker pot, the infrastructure still needed power. So Cummins did what Cummins does. It stayed useful. It stayed paid.

The diesel kept purring while the adults behaved like children with knives.

The Iran Licence Saga: The Kind Of Dirt That Clings

Then there’s the Iranian mobile licence dispute. Years of litigation. Serious allegations. Serious denials. Enough geopolitical stink to make your clothes smell just from reading about it.

Turkcell’s position has been that it was wronged. Others have said that’s bullshit. Courts have been chewing it over for years because that’s what courts do when the allegations are big enough and the money is obscene.

The point here is not to cosplay as a prosecutor. The point is: this is the kind of environment Turkcell operates in – and the kind of customer Cummins happily supports with “uninterrupted power”.

If your telecom empire is wading through mud this deep, you don’t get to pretend you’re just a neutral “tech company”. You’re a political animal. You’re a corporate fist. And Cummins is the generator strapped to your back. But still, as long as the cheques clear, right?

Ensar: The Association That Makes People Want To Vomit

Here’s where it stops being merely grubby and starts being genuinely sickening.

Turkcell faced major public backlash over links and support connected to the Ensar Foundation, which became notorious after reporting around the sexual abuse of boys in homes and apartments linked to Ensar and KAIMDER, and the wider fury about protection, proximity to power, and accountability that never seems to reach the people who deserve it.

You don’t casually brush that off with PR language. You don’t “clarify” your way out of it. If your brand ends up anywhere near a scandal like that, the stain doesn’t fade. It dries into the fabric.

And that’s the part that curdles the blood. Even when the public is screaming, the corporate machine keeps running. The servers keep humming. The executives keep smiling. The diesel keeps burning.

Because Cummins is paid to keep the lights on, not to ask what the lights are shining on. Let that marinate.

Data Leaks And Privacy: Trust Running Out Like Engine Oil

Telecoms hold the keys to millions of lives. Your identity. your movements. your habits. your patterns. Your entire existence, neatly packaged into monetisable records.

And Turkcell has been linked to serious leak incidents, including RedHack publishing thousands of Turkcell personnel numbers.

Even if a company disputes the scale or specifics, the recurring theme is the same: trust leaks. And once trust goes, telecom stops being a service and becomes extraction with a SIM card. Meanwhile Cummins is there powering the data-centre heartbeat, keeping the whole operation alive like a ventilator in the basement.

A perfect metaphor, really. A company accused of cheating emissions laws now enabling a company accused of mishandling people’s data. Modern capitalism, running fumes and excuses and little accountability.

Why This Belongs In Greedy Genset Giants

Cummins loves this sector because it lets them wear a halo while doing the same old diesel business. Data centres are the perfect cover story. Call it “critical infrastructure” and suddenly nobody asks why a company with a filthy emissions record is still elbow-deep in the future.

They sell “resilience” like it’s virtue. It’s not. It’s a business model. And Turkcell is exactly the kind of customer that makes the model look profitable and morally bankrupt at the same time.

Cummins keeps pretending it’s on some ethical journey. Then it bolts itself to a customer whose controversies stack up like ashtrays outside a courtroom.

Greedy Genset Giants isn’t about one customer. It’s about the whole ecosystem that keeps Cummins paid, protected, and shameless.

Closing Cut

Turkcell gets to sell connection. Cummins gets to sell continuity. Investors get to sell themselves bedtime stories about “growth” and “innovation”.

And the public gets the bill: leaked data, rotten governance, sickening associations, and diesel humming underneath it all like the soundtrack to a bad decision.

This is why this series exists. To tell you what is really happening, why the stock is really rising, whilst they pretend to you that it’s all about renewables and hydrogen.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Greedy Genset Giants : Turkcell – Telecom Titan, Diesel Backup, Moral Sewage