LOS ANGELES — Knicks middle Enes Kanter stated on Friday that he wouldn’t journey with the crew to play the Washington Wizards in London on Jan. 17 as a result of he feared he could possibly be killed for his public opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
Kanter, who’s Turkish, has been an outspoken critic of the president for years.
“Sadly, I’m not going due to that freaking lunatic, the Turkish president,” Kanter stated after the Knicks’ 119-112 victory over the Lakers. “It’s fairly unhappy that every one the stuff impacts my profession and basketball as a result of I wish to be on the market and assist my crew win. However simply due to the one lunatic man, one maniac, one dictator, I can’t even go on the market and do my job. It’s fairly unhappy.”
Kanter, who as soon as referred to Erdogan as “the Hitler of our century,” stated there was an opportunity he might “get killed on the market” if he have been to journey to London.
“Oh yeah, straightforward,” Kanter stated. “They’ve plenty of spies there. I might get killed there straightforward.”
A Knicks official later stated that Kanter was not touring to London due to a visa subject.
In Could 2017, Kanter was detained for a number of hours at an airport in Romania after the Turkish authorities canceled his journey paperwork. Later that 12 months, Turkey’s state-run information company reported that prosecutors have been looking for greater than 4 years in jail for Kanter on prices that he had insulted Erdogan on social media.