I first met Enes Kanter Freedom during a trip to Norway in 2022.
It was near the end of May; spring was just beginning to give way to summer and the the air smelled of rainstorms and clean-cut grass. We were there to participate in the Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual conference hosted by the Human Rights Foundation that brings together some of the world’s leading activists and dissidents—the firebrand enemies of authoritarian states.
I was invited to moderate a panel discussion on the trend of despots using sports for political gain, a process known as sportswashing. Enes, meanwhile, was there to receive the 2022 Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent—an award he earned for using his substantial platform as an renowned athlete to condemn Turkey’s pivot towards authoritarianism under president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
As one of Erdoğan’s most vocal critics, Enes has had to endure the wrath of the Turkish government. Authorities have targeted his entire family, raiding the family home in 2016 and shunning them from participating in civil society, all in an attempt to silence the basketball player. During a visit to Indonesia in 2017, the Turkish government attempted to kidnap the athlete using local police. Turkish authorities later revoked Enes’ Turkish passport, rendering him stateless at the time, while prosecutors sought an international arrest warrant from Interpol after accusing him of being a member in a terror organization.
Enes’ activism is not limited to Turkish politics. Among other issues, the former Boston Celtics center has been critical of the National Basketball Association’s growing relationship with China despite the government’s well-documented human rights abuses. He has not played for the NBA since being traded and cut last season and has since stated that he believes his activism led to him being blackballed.
On our second day in Oslo, I spotted Enes Kanter Freedom in the lobby of our hotel and made my way over to greet him. Dressed in a dark sports jacket and a black t-shirt and jeans, the former NBA player towered over the crowd lingering around him. And though I was also a sizeable 6′4,” I felt him eclipse me as he leaned over to shake my hand. I told him that I had interviewed him for The Guardian two years earlier and was surprised to find that he remembered me and our conversation at the time.
We ran into each other several more times during the conference, including after a gala dinner where we chatted about his apparent exile from the NBA, his pivot to human rights activism as a full-time pursuit, and the looming shadow of authoritarianism over the sports world. And while I did not interview him at the time, we agreed that we would make time for that at a later date.
Then came the news that the Turkish government had placed Enes Kanter Freedom on the most-wanted-terrorists list and was offering 10 million Turkish Lira (roughly $500,000) for information leading to his capture. I reached out to Enes and asked if he would be willing to talk about it. He was.
The incident occurred while Enes was leading a basketball camp in Vatican City in January 2023. He received a call from the FBI informing him that he should return to the U.S. immediately.
“I thought they were joking,” Enes told me during a phone call last week. “At that point, I didn’t know what to do.”
The next day, Enes Kanter Freedom booked himself onto a flight back to the United States and met with the FBI upon his arrival. They advised him not to leave the country for the foreseeable future, as the published bounty could trigger “mafias, professional killers and actual bad people to try and do something.”
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