Turkey accuses New York Knicks center Enes Kanter of terrorist support

Turkish prosecutors on Wednesday formally accused New York Knicks center Enes Kanter of supporting terrorism, and are requesting assistance from Interpol in securing an international arrest warrant for the 25-year-old, The Associated Press reports.

The move caps months of tension between Turkey and Kanter, who was born in the country and has been a vocal critic of its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Kanter — whose Turkish passport was revoked in 2017 for, he claimed, his political outspokenness — had chosen to remain stateside for tomorrow's Knicks game in London against the Washington Wizards, telling reporters, "I'm not going because of that freaking lunatic, the Turkish president ... They've got a lot of spies there ... I can get killed very easy."

As ESPN notes, Kanter is only extraditable if the United States believes that he has committed a crime that would be subject to prosecution in this country. And while today's request alleges that Kanter's support of Fethullah Gulen — an influential imam and fellow Turkish exile who is himself the subject of extradition talks — amounts to terrorism, Kanter asserted his innocence: "Turkish Government can NOT present any single piece of evidence of my wrongdoing," he tweeted after the charges became public. "I don't even have a parking ticket in the U.S."

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Jacob Lambert is the art director of TheWeek.com. He was previously an editor at MAD magazine, and has written and illustrated for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Weekly, and The Millions.