Enes Kanter, the Portland Trail Blazers’ newly acquired big man, made national headlines last month when he did not travel with the New York Knicks to London for their game against the Washington Wizards. Normally, an NBA player not traveling with his team doesn’t get national media attention, but normally, an NBA player isn’t refusing to travel because he fears for his life.
Kanter, a Turkish citizen, has been a harsh critic of Turkey’s president Recep Tayyipp Erdogan and a vocal supporter of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania whom the Turkish government has accused of being behind a 2016 coup to overthrow Erdogan.