Enes Kanter Illustration by Tom Bachtell

On a recent off day for the New York Knicks, Enes Kanter—the team’s gifted new center, who moved to the United States from Turkey eight years ago—was at the White Plains Ritz-Carlton trying to decide if it was safe for him to go out for halal kebabs. Kanter is six feet eleven, with manicured facial hair that makes him look older than his twenty-five years—until he smiles, which he does often. The Knicks had just practiced at their training facility in Tarrytown, and Kanter had showered and changed into clean sweats. There was a halal joint called Turkish Cuisine down the block, but Kanter was hesitant. “I don’t know if it’s a my Turkish-people Turkish restaurant or a their Turkish-people Turkish restaurant,” he said, sitting in the lobby. “It could be a problem!”

Kanter is an outspoken critic of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian President. On Twitter, he has called Erdoğan “the Hitler of our century.” In person, he rattles off stats on Erdoğan’s rollback of civil liberties since a July, 2016, coup attempt against him. “There have been more than sixty thousand people jailed,” he said. “Turkey is No. 1 at putting reporters in jail.” Civilian critics are silenced, too. “If you go to Turkey and you try to check my Twitter, it says ‘BANNED.’ ”

Kanter’s parents and sister are still in Turkey, but he has not talked with them since the coup. “I cannot communicate with my family,” he said, explaining that government censors “listen to everything.” Last summer, Kanter’s father denounced him in the Turkish press, saying, “With a feeling of shame I apologize to our president and the Turkish people for having such a son.” Kanter says the comment was coerced: “My dad has to say a thing like that. If he wouldn’t say it, he’d be in jail right now.”

Last spring, during the Knicks’ off-season, Kanter had plans to hold youth basketball clinics in sixteen countries, a bit of charitable globe-trotting that was to include, he said, stops in “Philippines, Tokyo, Korea—the good one, not the crazy one,” and then a visit to Europe, to see the “Pop . . . Papa?” He grabbed his phone and scrolled through his Twitter feed until he came to @Pontifex. “Pope!”

He smiled and went on with the story. “So we landed in Indonesia; we had our clinic; everything was cool.” At around 2:30 A.M., his manager knocked on his hotel-room door. “He told me the Army and intelligence service had come to the school where we just had the clinic. He said the Turkish government called Indonesia and told them, ‘Enes Kanter? He’s a dangerous man.’ ”

Recalling the night, Kanter arched his eyebrows, still befuddled. He’d made a split-second decision, and told his manager, “We should escape this country right now.” They caught the next flight, a 5:30 A.M. to Singapore, then continued to Romania, hoping to resume the clinics. “I gave my passport to this lady at the Bucharest airport. She said, ‘Your passport is cancelled—you cannot get into this country.’ ” She referred him to a police officer. “So I’m, like, ‘What is the reason?’ The policeman said, ‘It’s a secret.’ ” Kanter decided to head back to New York, via London.

At the gate at Heathrow, Kanter said, “there was this gentleman waiting from U.S. Homeland Security. He asked for my green card, took some notes, and he said, ‘O.K., you’re good to go.’ And I was, like, ‘Man. Now we’re safe.’ ”

Kanter joined the Knicks in September, as part of the trade that sent Carmelo Anthony to the Oklahoma City Thunder. He’d been beloved in Oklahoma, where he and a close friend, the hirsute Kiwi bruiser Steven Adams, became known as the Stache Brothers. Still, Kanter was thrilled about the trade. “Before, I could reach out to, like, a million people,” he said. “In New York, I can reach out to a hundred million. I have an even stronger voice. So I need to use it.”

After the passport incident, Kanter said, his family’s home in Istanbul was raided by the police for electronics—“They wanted to see if I’m still in contact”—and his father was jailed for five days. “I get death threats. I don’t know if I should take them seriously,” he said, sighing. Then the smile came back. “You never know. He”—Erdoğan—“is a crazy man.”

In New York, Kanter said, it’s hard to know how Turkish immigrants will react to him. He is leery of unfamiliar Turkish restaurants. “You could go to a place and find it’s run by a President supporter!” he said. “And they might just kick me out.”

Finally, he headed out to case Turkish Cuisine. He stood across the street from the restaurant, a plain storefront with a giant fork and spoon on the sign. “So this is the place,” he said, squinting. “I don’t wanna get too close. I still don’t know—is it my Turkish or somebody else’s Turkish?”

After a minute, he turned back toward the hotel. “I’ll take you to a Turkish restaurant in the city,” he said. “The one I know, on Fifty-seventh Street? It’s really, really good!” But, reached by telephone later, the owner of Turkish Cuisine, Apo Kilic, who is Kurdish, dismissed Kanter’s apprehensions. “He’s more than welcome to come,” he said. “He can say anything he wants!” ♦