There is a drama taking place in the NBA that’s well beyond wins and losses. It centers on a player—part of this generation’s wave of international basketball talent—who believes that he could be killed by his own government. The player is Enes Kanter, a center for the New York Knicks.
In January, the Turkish-born Kanter went public and said that he would not be joining his team for a game in England because he believes that once outside the United States, he would be targeted for death by Turkey’s “strongman” president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Speaking about racism in the United States, but using one’s NBA platform to speak out about a dictator abroad is new ground.
“I talked to the front office and they said I’m not going because of that freaking lunatic, the Turkish president,” Kanter told the New York Daily News. “There’s a chance that I can get killed out there,” he said. “It’s pretty sad because it affects my career, my basketball.”
Asked about his chances of being murdered, Kanter said, “Oh yeah. Easy. They have a lot of spies there. I can be killed easily.”
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Enes Kanter
The twenty-six-year-old Kanter’s very public sparring with Erdoğan goes back a number of years. It is rooted in Kanter’s public support of Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, who lives in exile in the mountains of Eastern Pennsylvania. Erdoğan believes Fethullah Gülen was behind a failed coup attempt in 2016. Kanter’s father, Mehmet, was sentenced by the Turkish government to a fifteen-year prison sentence for the family’s alleged support of Gülen. The official charges were for “being a member of a terrorist organization.”
All this happened even though Mehmet Kanter and his family “disavowed” both Gülen and their son. Enes Kanter, a vocal supporter of Gülen, responded by cutting ties with his family.
Kanter has further angered the regime by continuing to taunt them over social media. After his father’s sentence, he tweeted: “I will continue to keep fighting for Human Rights and Freedom of Speech Justice and Democracy above all. I will stand for what I believe in. All I’m doing is trying to be voice of innocent people. Keep my family, innocent people in your prayers.”
In 2017, when a Turkish judge issued an arrest warrant for Enes Kanter for his support of Gülen, the Knicks center tweeted, “You can’t catch me. Don’t waste your breath. I will come on my own will anyway, to spit on your ugly, hateful faces.”
When the Turkish government canceled Kanter’s passport, leading to his detention in a Romanian airport. Kanter posted a video where he commented, “You know, the reason behind it is just of course my political views. And the guy who did it is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey. He’s a bad, bad man. He’s a dictator. And he’s the Hitler of our century.”
While the sport of basketball has become friendlier in recent years to politically outspoken players like LeBron James and Steph Curry, Kanter presents a whole new level of challenge. That’s because the NBA, outside of the United States, wants to be all things to all nations: a global cash machine that can take root in countries both authoritarian and democratic.
The sport has been far more comfortable with politics that end at the water’s edge. Speaking about racism in the United States, but using one’s NBA platform to speak out about a dictator abroad is new ground.
Yet in a league that depends more and more on international labor, it was inevitable that there would be players who spoke out about their own countries. The idea that an NBA player feels credibly like he could be killed for a political conflict, and is resolutely—even gleefully—using social media to throw more gasoline on the fire, will be a test for Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA.
Enes Kanter has made his decision: to be a thorn in the side of a dangerous regime, Now Adam Silver is going to need to make a decision of his own about whether the league will have his back.