Unlike football, the players are the NBA They are not prohibited from discussing their political positions or beliefs. This is reflected in various positions, such as B. Flat earthing in the case of Kyrie Irving or anti-vaccination like Andrew Wiggins; however, they do punish anti-Semitic or homophobic behavior, as was the case with the former after she promoted a film against the Jewish community. However, there is one player who was not sanctioned by the NBA but by his own country after attacking the president and supporting the opposition.
Who is this player?
Is about Enes Kanter, Swiss player of parents born in Turkey, a place where entry has been banned for years. In addition, he was stripped of his citizenship in 2017 and was stateless until receiving U.S. citizenship in 2021. On January 13, 2023, the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan It has named him the country’s most wanted terrorist and offered a €500,000 reward to anyone who provides information to help his arrest, according to The Turkish Minute newspaper.
What did Kanter do to get in trouble with Turkey?
In 2016 he called the Turkish president “the Hitler of the century” after a failed coup. Later, in 2017, during pre-season training in Indonesia, his coach woke him up at night and told him that the authorities had informed him that he was in an irregular situation in the country and had to leave. He decides to leave the country immediately and during a stopover in Romania he is told that the Turkish government is canceling his passport by revoking his citizenship and that he will be arrested. There the hashtag #FreeEnesKanter (Enes Kanter Libre) went viral until he was allowed to leave for London and return to the USA.
He is then tried in Turkey and sentenced to 4 years in prison, although he never defended himself because he was not present at the trial. From then on, he was left incommunicado by his family. In 2018, the Turkish government involved Kanter’s father, a university professor, in a terrorist organization. The year 2019 would come and Turkey would give Interpol a red alert and demand the capture of Enes; However, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden would stand up for him to avoid further trouble.
China would join the attacks against Kanter for calling Xin Jinping a “brutal dictator” while expressing his opinion in favor of Tibet’s freedom. One of the NBA’s top commercial targets is the Asian country, but according to commissioner Adam Silver, Kanter had every right to speak his mind. Despite this, he would not get a contract with any team after that.
Due to his troubles, he currently resides in Washington where he is protected by the US government along with his family. When she received US citizenship, she changed her name to Enes Freedom. In 2022 he announced that he had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
What were your NBA records?
Kanter played 11 seasons in the NBA, progressing through the Utah Jazz, Oklahoma City Thunder, New York Knicks, Portland Trail Blazers and Boston Celtics, where he played 807 postseason and regular games. He averaged 10.9 points per game and reached the 2016 conference finals when he lost the series to the Cleveland Cavaliers 3-1.