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For years, Enes Kanter enjoyed the unconditional support of the National Basket Association (NBA). The basketball player of Turkish origin, 2.08 meters, 113 kg and a big candid smile, could express himself at leisure against the president of his country, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – the “Hitler of our century”as he calls it.
The best player of his generation in Turkey, the pivot, who made his league debut in 2011 aged 19, used his fame to promote his political ideas from the United States, like others stars of the institution, encouraged by the NBA to engage in civil rights or in the defense of minorities. “League boss Adam Silver was texting me saying, ‘We’re here for you. Keep doing what you are doing, you are standing up for freedom in Turkey”tells “M Le magazine du Monde” this supporter of the Muslim preacher Fethullah Gülen, Erdogan’s pet peeve.
Everything changes on October 20, 2021. Enes Kanter joined the legendary Boston Celtics franchise for his eleventh year in the NBA. The player is in New York with his team, in anticipation of the kickoff of the season, scheduled for the next day against the Knicks. He broods in his hotel room.
The broadcast of the match is interrupted
The pivot remembers the criticisms of a couple met in a basketball camp, a few weeks earlier: “How can you call yourself a human rights activist when your Muslim brothers and sisters are tortured and raped every day in concentration camps in China? » He had never heard of the Uighurs, this persecuted Muslim minority in western China, whose nationals are locked up by the hundreds of thousands in camps.
Enes Kanter inquired about their case. He also learned, more generally, about the authoritarian mores of the Chinese regime. As basketball fans around the world wait for the NBA to resume, the player posts a nearly three-minute video on social media lashing out at China and its “brutal dictator” the president, Xi Jinping. « Free Tibet »he proclaims, t-shirt on the back representing the Dalai Lama, in support with the territory under Chinese occupation since 1950. « Free Tibet », he still wears, the next day, on his pair of sneakers when treading the parquet floor of Madison Square Garden. The cameras zoom in on his shoes, designed by artist and Chinese dissident Badiucao, exiled in Australia.
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