N.B.A. Player Enes Kanter Released After Being Held in Romania
By BENJAMIN HOFFMANMAY 20, 2017
While he was at the airport, he wasn’t detained or locked up; he was allowed to wander around, but he couldn’t enter the country." Later on Saturday, Kanter posted a message on Twitter saying
that he was safe in London, with New York his next stop.
pic.twitter.com/uYZMBqKx54 In an interview with The New York Times, Fabian Badila, a spokesman for the Romanian
border police, said Kanter had arrived in Romania on a flight from Frankfurt at about 1 p.m. on Saturday.
Badila said that My colleagues established that his travel documents weren’t valid,
Last August, Kanter’s father, Mehmet, publicly condemned his son’s political views, writing a
letter published by the Turkish news media that claimed his son had been hypnotized by Gulen.
The day started with Kanter, a 6-foot-11 center for the Oklahoma City Thunder, saying in a video posted on Twitter
that he had been detained at the Bucharest airport, with the authorities telling him that his passport had been canceled.
He has said his political views resulted in his being left off the Turkish national basketball team for EuroBasket 2015.
