Enes Kanter is no longer Enes Kanter. The Turkish pivot, news in recent times more for his statements than for his performance on the track, has decided to change his name. He does so one day before he is officially a US citizen. His new name, surname in fact, surely does not leave indifferent: Enes Kanter Freedom.
Liberty it will be his first surname and Kanter becomes part of his name. This has been advanced by the journalist Shams Charania. Kanter, 29, is in his second spell as a player for the Boston Celtics, after playing there for the 2019-20 season. In this, for now, he has played 9 games (none of the starters) with an average of 11.2 minutes. Since he came to the NBA, it is the course in which he is playing the least.
Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter is legally changing his name to Enes Kanter Freedom, @TheAthletic @Stadium learned. Kanter will be his middle name, Freedom is his new last name. He becomes a U.S. citizen on Monday.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) November 28, 2021
But that has not prevented a lot of talk about him in recent months, although for other extra-sports issues. For years it has been uncovered as a social and human rights activist, starting with his own country. His criticisms of the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been very harsh, reaching call the Turkish president the “Hitler of our century”. Erdogan’s government tried to arrest him in 2019, accusing him of belonging to a terrorist organization. In July 2020, Kanter shared on social media a sample of the “hundreds” of death threats he received on a daily basis.
More recently, the controversy has come through his criticism of the Chinese government for its “lack of respect for human rights”, calling on the IOC to move the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, where they are to be held, to another venue outside of Chinese territory. But it didn’t stop there, and He also got involved with the sports brand Nike for having business in the Asian country and with LeBron James as one of the most important images of the brand: “Money over morale for the King”, he tweeted on November 18.
