LOS ANGELES — Knicks center Enes Kanter said on Friday that he would not travel with the team to play the Washington Wizards in London on Jan. 17 because he feared retaliation for his public opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

Kanter, who is Turkish, has been an outspoken critic of the president for years.

“Sadly, I’m not going because of that freaking lunatic, the Turkish president,” Kanter said after the Knicks’ 119-112 victory over the Lakers. “It’s pretty sad that all the stuff affects my career and basketball because I want to be out there and help my team win. But just because of the one lunatic guy, one maniac, one dictator, I can’t even go out there and do my job. It’s pretty sad.”

Kanter said Turkish operatives could present a danger to him in London.

“They have a lot of spies there,” he said. “I could get killed there easy.”

An official at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, speaking Saturday on the condition of anonymity to abide by diplomatic protocol, dismissed Kanter’s comments as baseless.