By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
I’m O.K., but I’m also not O.K., you know? I am lucky. My story has a happy ending. There are thousands of other Turkish people out there with stories that don’t have happy endings. They are not so lucky.
Kanter, 25, has expressed his opposing will to the Turkish government multiple times. In his homecountry he is considered, more or less, “the enemy”. He opens up to The Players’ Tribune and shares his lengthy and tiring journey back to the United States.
“Last week I escaped in the middle of the night from Indonesia. Then I got detained in an airport in Romania because the Turkish government canceled my passport. All on the same weekend. Maybe you saw the videos I posted. It was my birthday on Saturday, too. I turned 25. In one second, I was countryless. Just like that. It was a very weird birthday.
It is crazy how a government can take away your right to go home. Or your freedom to travel. Not for any actual crimes, but for what you say or what you believe.
That is what the Erdoğan government did to me. That is what is happening right now to thousands of people in Turkey. The biggest threat to Erdoğan is free speech, so he will punish anyone who speaks up or thinks for himself. You can ask the protesters beaten by his security detail last week in Washington, D.C.
Now I am back on American soil. I have never been so relieved to see a “Welcome to the USA” sign in an airport.
You guys need to know what is going on in Turkey right now. I hope people around the world will open their eyes to the human rights abuses. Things have gotten very bad over the last year. This is not my opinion. We don’t know everything that is happening inside Turkey, but we do know some facts. Newspapers and media have been restricted. Academics have been fired. Peaceful protesting is not allowed. Many people have been imprisoned without any real charges. There are reports of torture and rape and worse.”
He then goes into detail about “escaping” from Indonesia on his birthday night.
“Now I will tell you how I escaped from Indonesia right before my birthday. I heard a knock on my hotel door while I was sleeping. That’s how it all started.
I use the word “escaped” because that’s what it felt like. But not like a movie. This was real. I don’t use the word for fun. If I had been sent back to Turkey, you might not be hearing from me right now. There are many professors, lawyers, judges, doctors and others in jail in Turkey whose “crime” was the use of their voice.
I was in Indonesia to run a basketball clinic for kids. It was for my foundation, the Enes Kanter Light Foundation. On Friday, after the last clinic, I went to my hotel and went to sleep.
At 2:30 a.m. I woke up. Somebody was knocking on my door. It was my manager. He looked very serious.
“The police are looking for you,” he said. He had gotten a call from one of his local contacts. The Indonesian police had come to my basketball clinic earlier in the evening. Why? Because they received a call from the Turkish government saying I was “a dangerous man.”
Today I am countryless, but I will figure things out. I have felt at home in America ever since I arrived, and one day I hope to become an American citizen.