Enes Kanter, who already has a warrant out for his arrest in Turkey, said today that his father Mehmet has been arrested due to Kanter's criticism of Turkey and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.Kanter is an open supporter of Fethullah Gulen, the exiled cleric who Erdoğan has accused of launching a coup against him last summer; Gulen has denied any involvement. Last month, Kanter was detained at a Romanian airport after his passport was canceled by the Turkish government, and claimed that he Turkey tried to have him arrested in Indonesia, where Kanter had traveled as part of his offseason goodwill tour.In a statement Kanter released this afternoon, he claims that his father's arrest was motivated by Kanter's political dissent, and links him to other victims of Erdoğan's sprawling purges of Turkish civil society.
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Kanter was disowned by his family last year, for reasons that his parents ascribed to his political affiliations and activism; it's unclear whether this was an act of self-preservation or a sign of a serious rift, but Kanter says he has not engaged with his family in years. Either way, Kanter—who at one point changed his surname to Gulen after being disowned— came to the defense of his father, proclaiming his innocence after police raided his home in Istanbul.In his statement, Kanter decried not just Erdoğan's purges but also the allegations of appalling crimes in the Turkish prison system in the aftermath of the failed coup, citing stories from Amnesty International about the rape and torture of political prisoners. He later goes on to contextualize the imagination he has for the common people of Turkey, saying, "For a second please think and imagine, if something like this is happening to an NBA player, what is happening to the people with no voice or podium to speak on?"Further details of the arrest are currently unknown.