The New York Knicks will travel across the pond to play the Washington Wizards in London on Jan. 17. But when they do, their starting center will not make the trip with them.
It’s not that Enes Kanter is struggling (averaging 14.4 points per game with 10.7 rebounds), it’s that he does not feel safe traveling to Europe.
Although the team initially said Kanter could not travel due to a visa issue, over the weekend he said it was because of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Sadly, I’m not going because of that freaking lunatic, the Turkish president,” Kanter said. “There’s a chance that I can get killed out there. So that’s why I talked to the [Knicks’] front office. I’m not going.”
“It’s pretty sad that just all this stuff affects my career and basketball because I want to be out there helping my team win,” he added. “But just because of that one lunatic guy, one maniac or dictator, I can’t even go out there and just do my job. So it’s pretty sad.”
Kanter spoke out against Turkey’s de facto dictator in 2016 following a failed coup d’etat attempt on him in a series of tweets. He later called the leader “the Hitler of our century” and was labeled a “terrorist” by Erdogan and has a four-year prison sentence waiting for him in Turkey if he ever returns. His family disowned him, and he has received countless death threats.
That said, Kanter is right to not make the trip, and the situation is a reminder of how lucky we are to have free-speech protections in the United States.
Kanter said he was concerned about Turkish spies in the United Kingdom, who could harm him. While his claim might seem paranoid, it has some merit. Turkey has been accused of having spies throughout the globe and in Europe. If not them, however, the threat also exists that angry Turkish citizens could travel across the continent to harass or attack him — although they still need a visa to travel to European Union countries (which the United Kingdom is still a part of, for now).
Kanter’s fear shows just how different Turkey is from the United States. It’s a country where people have been jailed for drawing cartoons, criticizing their leader on social media, reporting on government, and being a politician who disagrees with Erdogan.
Sadly, the kind of free speech we take for granted is not even a right in the developed world. While criticizing a leader might not carry a hefty penalty in many countries, hate speech laws muzzle voices in first-world nations — like the United Kingdom and Germany, where people have been arrested over “offensive” social media posts.
In contrast, Americans have the right to say whatever dumb or fringe ideas they might have. People are free to call President Trump and former President Barack Obama “morons,” and much worse.
Sure, free speech protections can be messy when neo-Nazis and communists use it to promote their hateful and evil agendas. However, those are fringe ideas, and free speech can also be important for people to be able to speak out against politicians when they disagree with them.
After all, it was the words of civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. that got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed and women such as Susan B. Anthony whose activism helped women earn the right to vote.
Regardless of how one feels about someone else’s ideas, it is important to recognize that they have the right to their ideas and should be safe to express them. That’s why the First Amendment exists. It’s just a shameful that other countries, including Kanter’s homeland of Turkey, deny their citizens this basic right.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
