Knicks star Enes Kanter is laughing in the face of thin-skinned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is trying to jail the hoopster for 48 months for talking smack about Erdogan’s foul regime.
“I was like, ‘That’s it? Only four years?’ All the trash I’ve been talking?” said the 6-11 center, who was born in Switzerland and raised in Turkey, after practice Wednesday. “I’m just trying to be the voice of all of these innocent people, man. Journalists, innocent people in jail getting tortured and killed and kidnapped.”
An indictment prepared Wednesday by the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office accuses Kanter of tweeting insults that “defame and deride” the strongman in May and June of last year, according to state news agency Anadolu.
Kanter said he’s used to “maniac” Erdogan’s regime taking shots at dissenters. “You cannot criticize or you cannot even say nothing bad about the dude, Erdogan. Just like say he’s a ‘bad guy’ and you’re in a prison,” Kanter said.
He’s more concerned about taking charge on the basketball court than fending off charges in Erdogan’s kangaroo court.
“That stuff really don’t bother me because I’m used to it,” Kanter said of the indictment. “I’m in America. My focus right now is just going out there, playing basketball, have fun with my teammates and just winning and just thinking about playoffs.”
Kanter, a green-card holder, will likely be tried in absentia because the United States doesn’t extradite to Turkey unless the alleged infraction violates both US federal law and Turkish law, The Washington Post reported.
The First Amendment shields Kanter’s right to free speech.
That notion is laughable in Turkey, where more than 150 journalists have been jailed since last summer for criticizing Erdogan, according to a report by Public Radio International.
Under Erdogan, the Eurasian nation is the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with more than one-third of those incarcerated across the globe held within its boundaries, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Erdogan, who rose to power in 1999 on a conservative Islamist agenda, has been particularly on edge since last summer, when a military coup nearly deposed him. He has blamed Fethullah Güle, a Muslim cleric living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, for the attempted power grab, although the cleric has denied any involvement in the plot.
A Turkish court has named Kanter a fugitive because of his support for Gulen, and Kanter’s father, Mehmet, was forced to renounce his firstborn son.
“With a feeling of shame I apologize to our president and the Turkish people for having such a son,” he wrote in a 2016 letter, according to Reuters.
Erdogan recently threatened to imprison Mehmet for his son’s Twitter remarks.
“They actually tried . . . to put my dad in jail for seven days, but thanks to you guys — you guys put too much pressure on the Turkish media so they had to let him go,” Kanter told reporters.
Turkey also revoked Kanter’s passport, which he described as a common tactic to get critics of the Erdogan regime deported back to face punishment.
The baller was detained in Romania in May during a global tour for the Enes Kanter Foundation, which provides meals and clothing to the needy, according to The Washington Post.
But with help from his team at the time, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and federal officials, he was able to travel to London and then on to the Big Apple.
During an airport news conference after his release, Kanter called Erdogan the “Hitler of our century.”
Ironically, it’s a matter the two might agree on — Erdogan said in 2015 that Hitler’s Germany exemplified the “presidential system with a unitary state” political system he was proposing for his country.
The autocrat has become increasingly erratic in recent years.
Fifteen of his personal body guards were indicted for attacking peaceful demonstrators outside the Turkish ambassador’s office in Washington, DC, during Erdogan’s visit to the capital in May. The goons injured 11 people in the decidedly undiplomatic melee.
Erdogan, who witnessed but did not try to stop the fracas, has called the charges “scandalous.”
Kanter, 25, was born in Zurich before his family moved to Turkey. He was playing pro basketball on Istanbul’s Fenerbahçe team at 14, and left after three years to play high-school ball at Stoneridge Preparatory School in Simi Valley, Calif.
His departure angered Fenerbahçe management, which sunk $150,000 into his training.
The Turkish league’s major backer, Doğuş Holdings, has a history of producing pro-Erdogan news and has been labeled “for-sale media” by critics, according to the World Policy Blog.
Kanter played two years at Stoneridge, but was barred from NCAA ball because of the money he received playing in Turkey.
In 2011, he was drafted by the Utah Jazz, before being traded to the Thunder in 2015. The Thunder traded him to the Knicks in September as part of the deal that sent Carmelo Anthony to Oklahoma City.
Kanter’s next plan to troll Erdogan? Reach the playoffs.
“If we make playoffs, then that will drive him crazy, so that’s what I’m really focused on right now,” he said.