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July 10, 2024 - Epoch Times
53:50
Enes Kanter Freedom: Giving Up $50 Million For Freedom
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Time Text
How can the biggest dictatorship in the world control a 100% American-made organization and put pressure on them to fire an American citizen?
Today I sit down with NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom.
After playing 11 seasons, his career abruptly ended when he made headlines speaking out about human rights abuses in China.
They are pretty much trying to invade America from the inside.
Because they know they're not strong enough to invade America from the outside.
Freedom tells me all about what made him the man he is today.
He grew up in Turkey under a repressive regime and was ultimately forced to choose between family and principle.
They sent police to my house in Turkey and they raided the whole house and they took every electronics away.
They wanted to see if I am still in contact with my family or not.
They put my name on Interpol lists.
I am pretty much an international criminal.
This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Jan Jekielek.
Dennis Cantor Freedom, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Of course, thank you for having me.
These days, you are building a foundation that's going to focus on basketball as a unifying force in the world, and I want to talk to you about that.
But before we go there, I really want to talk to you about how we got here, because not too long ago, you were getting some pretty great numbers in the NBA.
Why don't we start at the beginning?
Of course.
I was eight years old.
I decided to, you know, play a sport.
And, you know, actually, it's funny, soccer was the number one country in my homeland, Turkey, and I wanted to be a soccer player.
And growing up, you know, I just loved the game.
But just because of my height, because of how big I was, my teammates were just making me a goalie.
So I was like, you know what?
I'm just... I cannot do this anymore.
I'm just gonna switch to sports.
I actually started playing basketball very late.
I was 14 years old when I first started to play basketball.
Five years later, I became an NBA player when I was 19.
The important thing for me was, obviously, in Turkey, you either have to pick education or sports.
You cannot really do both.
My family actually wanted me to come to America.
They wanted me to play basketball and get my education at the same time.
I'm glad that I made that choice because I went to high school here, I went to college, and I've played 11 beautiful years in the NBA.
It's a very different reality in Turkey.
This is something that you talk about.
You have been basically quite vocal about issues you see in many places around the world, but it started there.
Well, till my second year in the NBA, I really didn't care about anything but just playing basketball, having fun with my teammates, and pretty much it was it.
You know, that was my whole life.
And then back in 2013, it was my third year in the league, there was a big corruption scandal happening in Turkey.
President Erdogan and some of his family members were involved in it.
I was following the news.
After he got caught, He was going around and putting innocent people in jail.
Journalists, you know, prosecutors, judges, and people who owns media outlets.
And then after that, he started to go around and shutting down media outlets.
So as an NBA player, I wasn't even like educated about the situation, so I just put a tweet out there.
Because of the NBA platform, you know, it became a conversation in the United States, in Turkey, and in many other countries around the world.
And I was like, even one simple tweet can affect this much.
I was like, from now on, I'm going to start to educate myself and study about what's going on.
So I remember after that moment, going forward, my teammates were going out, having fun, going out to clubs and bars, whatever.
So I was going back to my house.
I started to study.
I was studying the things that are happening between America and Turkey, what's happening in the Middle East, the politic, I guess, structure in Turkey and stuff.
The more I study, the more I realize I need to talk about these issues.
So I end up like writing op-eds to one of the biggest, I guess, newspapers in the world.
I started to give interviews.
I started to, you know, sit down and meet with some people and stuff.
So the things that are happening in my country, I was very vocal about it because it's human rights.
I never talk about politics side of my country or anywhere in the world.
I'm going to do a little bit of a segue here because there is this view, and actually it's a view quite popular here, and it's certainly the view in Communist China, which is relevant to our discussion, that anything you do is political.
Everything you do is politics.
How do you think about it?
How do you square that away?
You know, if you look at all my interviews, if you look at everything that I've ever talked about, if you look at, you know, all my op-eds that I wrote, every word of it, even in these dictatorships, I never talk about politics.
I have never said, okay, um, you know, we should vote for this guy, we should take him out, whatever.
I say this regime needs to go because they're violating, you know, so many, I guess, human rights violations.
There is no freedom of Speech, religion, expression, movement, protest and because human rights when you say human rights That is the one thing that is going to connect both sides, right and left.
That's what I'm hoping.
So that's why after my basketball career ended, I came here to D.C.
and I sat down with many senators, many congressmen, many people in very important positions.
I was like, well, what now?
Should I get into politics?
All of them said, absolutely not.
Because in America, the country is divided so much right now.
Once you get into politics, you're going to lose 50% of the people.
So just keep focusing on the message you have in your head and try to bring two sides together.
I agree with you that everything is in politics, but I feel like we're often dragged into it.
True.
But like I said, I have my message, and I'm just going to keep talking about it.
I started to talk about the problems that were happening in Turkey.
It affected me and also my family.
My dad was a scientist.
He got fired from his job.
My sister went to medical school for six years.
She still cannot find a job.
I think the saddest one was my little brother.
He was 12 years old and he wanted to be like his big brother, play in the NBA one day, represent his country, represent his family, do something he loved.
But he was getting kicked out of every team because of the same last name.
So they were getting affected so much they had to put a statement out there.
And said we are disowning NS publicly.
Actually the letter is still out there on the internet.
Everyone can find it.
So the Turkish government didn't believe that.
They sent police to my house in Turkey and they raided the whole house.
And they took every electronics away.
Phones, computers, laptops, iPads.
Because they wanted to see if I am still in contact with my family or not.
They couldn't find no evidence but they still took my dad in jail for a while.
But we put so much pressure from here.
With media, politicians, celebrities, NBA, to Turkey, they had to let him go.
And then after that, they revoked my passport, they put my name on Interpol list.
So till this day, I'm pretty much an international criminal.
This is an incredibly difficult decision that people who choose to be courageous with their voices have to make.
What was it like seeing that letter from your family?
I remember going to a practice that day, and it was all over.
First it was in Turkish media, then one of the American media picked it up.
In one hour, it was everywhere in the world.
Every media out there was talking about that letter.
It was tough.
I remember going to practice that day and all my teammates were looking at me in the locker room.
Just because it was so personal, they were scared to come and tell me, like, hey man, are you okay?
But I could just see in their eyes that they were worried for their teammates.
So I had to tell them, I'm like, listen, you know, it's a different system in Turkey.
There are so many people who talk about the regime in Turkey outside of the country, but just because of Turkey wants to shut them up, they put their family members in jail and they torture them.
So, unfortunately, it is like that in many countries around the world, like Iran is like that, China is like that, Russia is like that, Turkey is one of them.
Yeah, that's what the government does.
How difficult is it to have lost that contact?
Family is more important than everything.
That's your mom, that's your dad, that's your siblings that you grew up in.
It was very tough.
I mean, I have not seen them almost 10 years now.
It's been almost 10 years.
And just because of the Turkish government lists and everything.
phone numbers, they tracked down IP numbers, they are doing whatever they can to just make their life miserable.
They're not even allowed to leave Turkey.
They took their passport away.
So they said, you're not allowed to leave the country.
Like I said, again, it doesn't matter what you stand up for at the end, that's your family.
And that's what my teammates were asking me, like, dude, I understand you want to stand up for something so beautiful, but at the end, that's your family.
But then I tell them and say, listen, my family is only one.
I understand it's my family at the end, but it's only one.
There are so many families are in the jail right now, waiting for help.
There's a really good website.
I don't know if you haven't heard it or not.
Turkey purge.com.
And if you go on those websites, you see the numbers right now, there are 17,000 innocent women are in the jail, are getting torture and rape.
There are so many kids and babies are in the jail with their mother.
There are so many academics and professors who lost their jobs.
So many media outlets have been shut down.
And now I have the power to actually put a lot of pressure on it and just release people or change it.
I do work with a lot of people in DC, so they've been helping me a lot.
We're going to be talking about China shortly, and that's the country I'm most familiar with.
These types of impossible decisions that we're talking about right now are something that people have to make.
We have a mutual friend, Anastasia Lin, who experienced a very similar situation when she did her activism as Miss World Canada.
So you mentioned that your career in the NBA ended, but I think officially you're still in the NBA, right?
Just because I did not announce my retirement, which I am not going to until I'm 50 or 60 or whatever, because whenever I do an interview, whenever I go on the shows, when people call me a former NBA player, I stop the interview and I fix it.
I say, listen, I'm not a former NBA player because that's what destroys the NBA.
The NBA is like, you know what?
Once he declares his retirement, then it's like, OK, we know 100% that he's not going to try to play for any of the teams he can.
But right now, still working out, still in good shape, 30 years old, healthy, and I can start in many teams out there.
So I'm not announcing it.
Let's go back to how you started thinking about China now.
It seems pretty clear why you're thinking a lot about the reality in Turkey, but what turned you on to the reality in China?
The last 10 years, I talked about the problems that were happening in Turkey.
Just last summer, I'm doing a basketball camp in New York.
I had an amazing basketball camp with this congressman, Hakeem Jeffries.
After the basketball camp, we are taking pictures.
I'm taking pictures with the kid.
They come and get an autograph and stuff.
I remember taking a picture with this kid and his parents literally like right there, like a couple feet away.
And he said, how can you call yourself a human rights activist when your Muslim brothers and sisters are getting tortured and raped every day in concentration camp in China?
I'm still smiling for the camera, for the kid.
And I was like, I was shocked because he literally called me out in front of everybody.
The media was there, a lot of my friends were there, kids were there, parents, everybody.
And I took the picture with this kid and I turned around.
And I was like, I promise I want to get back to you.
You didn't know about this at the time.
I was hearing it, but just because of, I focused on Turkey so much because obviously my plate was so full.
My family was there.
I was trying to get them out of there.
My friends, my neighbors, like, so I really focused on Turkey.
So that day I canceled everything.
I went back to my hotel.
I started to study about what's going on.
The more I studied, the more I was ashamed of myself.
I was like, I cannot believe the last 10 years I was just focusing on one dictatorship.
Once you're going to talk about some of the like important issues around the world, you have to know if they are facts or not.
If they are fake news or real news, you know?
So I called my manager that night.
I was like, I need you to find me a concentration camp survivor.
So he found one.
It was a lady.
So we sit down and we had one hour conversation.
She was telling me about all the torture methods.
She was telling me about the gang raping.
She was telling me about organ harvesting, forced sterilization and abortion.
Actually, how many people are in there, she told me.
And actually, how many people are getting killed in those concentration camps.
And she was telling me about how the seven Chinese police were one night took her and raped her.
And they were biting every part of her body.
And she was telling me about it's actually on YouTube and you can go and find her very easily.
I don't want to expose her name.
She was telling me about this electric stick and this Chinese police were putting that electric stick in her private parts.
I don't want to go into too much detail because I don't know who's going to watch this interview.
Because if a kid watches it, it will literally leave a scar in their head.
These are utterly barbaric methods that have been used on any group that's basically targeted by the regime.
Exactly.
I don't want to go into too much detail, but at the end of our one-hour conversation, I asked her, OK, how can I help you?
She said, I'm good.
I don't need your help.
I don't want you to help me.
And I stopped for a second.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
So we just had this one-hour conversation for no reason.
She said, no.
She said, I'm good.
I'm in America.
I can go wherever I want.
I can do, say whatever I want.
I can eat whatever I want.
Don't help me.
Help those people in concentration camps.
So I started to study.
I started to talk to people.
And one topic, you jump onto another one, because once you do, you focus on Uyghurs, and then there's other links pops out.
Then you click on what's happening in Tibet.
Then you click on what's happening in Hong Kong.
Then you see Taiwan.
Then Falun Gong.
Then Mongolians.
I was like, wow!
And you see the only thing that I couldn't see, that I didn't see, there is not one celebrity.
Forget about athletes, singers, rappers, actors, whoever you are, you know?
They're not talking about this country.
They talk about all other problems.
They talk about Iran, Saudi Arabia.
They talk about Russia, they talk about North Korea, but when it comes to China, they're silent.
I was like, wow, okay, I guess that's my job from now on.
Why do you think there's this deafening silence around the CCP and not these others?
I'll give you an example from my story.
I remember Well, I obviously grew up as a huge NBA fan.
Huge Lakers fan, actually.
If the Celtics fans hears it, they're gonna be mad at me, but... So, whenever I watched an NBA game, the first thing I was watching was the shoes.
What color are the shoes that these players are wearing?
What brand it is?
If it's comfortable?
The next day, I was waking up and telling my dad, please buy those shoes for me, you know?
Every kid in the world loves shoes.
So I come up with this idea.
I was like, let's find these artists around the world who's been oppressed by their government.
And let's reach out to them and ask them to create these shoes for us, non-slave labor shoes.
That we're gonna put all the struggles, all the violations and everything on the shoes.
What's happened in Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Uyghurs, organ harvesting, surveillance cameras, concentration camps.
And then we went to, obviously, different topics.
Venezuela, and Cuba, and Iran, and Russia, and North Korea, and all that stuff.
So, I remember my first game.
It was the Celtics against the Knicks.
At Madison Square Garden.
Opening night for New York.
National TV on ESPN.
So the whole country was watching it.
It was the perfect moment.
And my first topic was Free Tibet.
The reason I wanted to do Tibet and not Uyghurs was because I didn't want people to say or think, oh, he's only doing it because he's Muslim.
And I grew up as a Dalai Lama fan.
So I put the shoes on.
I went out there.
I started to warm up.
A minute before, the game hasn't started yet.
The minute before the game, two gentlemen came from the Celtics.
They were working for the NBA.
They said, you gotta take your shoes off.
And I was very confused.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
Because I did a lot of research.
There's no rule against it.
Two years ago, when they put us in the NBA bubble, all the players were putting on their shoes, Black Lives Matter, I Cannot Breathe, Breonna Taylor.
I'm like, if that is the case, I can say Free Tibet.
I can say, stand with Hong Kong.
I can say, stand with Taiwan.
I can say, you know, Free Uyghurs, whatever.
So, they said, take your shoes off.
Why?
They said, your shoes has been getting so much attention internationally.
It was from China.
But they didn't say it was from China.
They said, you got to take your shoes off.
We've been getting a lot of pressure.
It was the perfect moment for me because I was just getting ready for my citizenship test.
So I was like, I closed my eyes.
I was like, okay, there are 27 amendments.
My first amendment, freedom of speech.
I told them, I'm not taking my shoes off.
Even if I get fined, I'm not taking them off.
And they said, we are not talking about a fine.
We're talking about getting banned.
I was like, wow, they're really threatening to ban me because of my shoes.
So, I didn't take them off, obviously.
That half, first half of the game, I played zero minutes.
I went back to my locker room.
I looked at my phone.
There was thousands of notifications.
I clicked on the one that my manager sent me.
He said, every Celtics game is banned in China.
That clearly helped my case that pretty much shows the dictatorship and the censorship that are happening and how scared they are.
So that game I played zero minutes, which I played every game before that.
After the game, my phone was ringing.
I took about the problems were happening in Turkey.
They did not even call me once.
Adam Silver, the commissioner of NBA, texted me twice and said, We got your back.
Keep doing what you're doing.
I talk about the problems that were happening in China.
My phone was ringing once every hour.
The NBPA, the player association, which I pay thousands of dollars every month to protect my rights against the NBA, were calling me and saying, you cannot wear those shoes ever again because we're getting pressure from the NBA.
And they pressured me and my manager so much.
I was like, you know what?
Promise.
I'm not going to wear free t-shirts ever again.
He said, promise?
I said, promise.
We hang up the phone.
The next game, I wore free Uyghur shoes.
And they called me after the game.
They were like, you're a liar.
You lied to us.
How could you do that?
I'm like, first of all, I never lied to you.
I never said I'm not going to wear free Uyghur shoes.
I just said I'm just not going to wear free Tibetan shoes.
At that moment, they understood that they're not going to be able to handle me.
Because after the second game, a guy called me.
His name is Daryl Mori.
He was the first guy who actually tweeted and said, stand with Hong Kong and NBA lost millions of dollars.
He said, listen, they made me apologize.
They made me took my tweet down.
They made me say, sorry, you don't apologize.
You keep doing what you're doing.
I was like, wow, this is crazy.
After the first game, after the Tibet game, one of my teammates woke up to me and said, you know, this is your last year in the NBA, right?
Have fun with it.
Enjoy.
But if you say anything against China, you're not going to be in the league ever again.
I hope you win a championship, but this is your last year.
I know you've told this story a number of times.
It's still unbelievable to me, the soft power that the Chinese regime exercises That was the one thing that really was driving me crazy.
The biggest dictatorship in the world can control a 100% American-made organization, put pressure on them to fire an American citizen.
But the more I talked to some people, the more I have done research, I was like, MB is not the only one.
You see Hollywood, you see big techs, you see academias, you see Wall Street, you see Congress and local Congresses.
They're pretty much trying to invade America from the inside because they know they're not strong enough to invade America from the outside.
So by buying these people, organizations, companies, right?
They're pretty much trying to destroy America from the inside.
And people are letting them.
Because they are bowing down to money.
They are bowing down to power.
And the more I researched, I was like, America is not the only one.
You see all the other Muslim countries around the world.
All the Muslim leaders.
When it comes to any other issues that is happening to the Islam or Muslims around the world.
These leaders, these sheikhs, these presidents or dictators, whatever.
Comes out and say, it's wrong.
What's happening to the Muslims are wrong.
But when it comes to Muslims in China, Uyghurs, they're silent.
Why?
Because of the economy.
Why?
Because they're scared of what China could do to them, you know?
So I was like, keep seeing this hypocrisy.
And I think that one thing that made me really sad was my teammates.
I was very disappointed.
I told them what Nike is doing.
I was like, listen, in America, Nike is beautiful.
Nike stands with Black Lives Matter, no Asian hate, LGBTQ community, Latino community.
But when it comes to China, I'm sure you guys know about the slave laborers and sweatshops.
They cannot say a word about it in that country or they will be, they will lose billions of dollars.
That's hypocrisy.
It was the perfect moment for me because it was just right before the Beijing Olympics.
So I literally try to reach out to everyone.
Not just, forget about NBA, NFL, MLB, MLS, NHL, forget about America, I try to reach out to Olympians!
I try to reach out to athletes in other countries.
Including my teammates, they said, listen, I think what you're doing is so amazing, so inspirational.
You're sacrificing a lot.
We love you, we support you, but we just cannot do it out loud.
I asked them why.
They said, well, we have shoe deals, endorsement deals, we have jersey sales.
We want to get another contract.
Well, what do you think would have happened if the NBA decided to stand with you?
The thing is, more people watch NBA games in China last year than the American population.
I believe around 450 million people watch NBA games in China.
So Chinese government cannot just ban all NBA in China.
It's a bluff, and NBA is biting it.
If not only me, but if a couple of players joined me, it would become a movement.
If players like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, or Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, or this Players that made a name for themselves in NBA, signed with companies like Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, Puma, whoever, come out and say, you know what?
Enough is enough.
We are sick of this NBA's hypocrisy.
NBA was the first organization when there was Black Lives Matter protests were happening in America.
All the players said, OK, we're not playing any games.
We are protesting.
Problems are happening in this country.
We have to take a stand.
We have a huge platform.
We can inspire millions of people.
I'm like, OK, human is human.
You either have no heart, no empathy, or you just care about money and business.
And you know the things that you stand up for in America is not going to cost you anything, not going to cost you your money or business or any kind of endorsement deals.
It's only really a statement when there's a cost, would you say? 100%.
I see these players standing up for things that has not cost them anything, that hasn't cost them their family, or any kind of money, any kind of business, nothing.
I remember after the third game, I wore the Winnie the Pooh shoes and said, free China.
My agent called me and he said, listen, I work for you, I don't work for NBA, so I have to be honest with you.
If you stop right now and don't say anything about it, you can put up an apology out there, you can just say you just didn't know enough about the situation, you were not educated enough, people are going to forgive you.
But if you say, if you were in other shoes, if you say another thing, then I'm sorry but I'm not going to be able to get you another contract after this.
This is it.
I said okay, I hang up the phone on his face.
That's it.
He called me a few months later and said, you know, this is your last year.
And an estimated amount of money that you lost is around $45 to $50 million.
Because you just turned 30.
And if I could have played another six years in the league, and sign like around six or seven million a year.
You know, that's with endorsement leads that I could have get with commercials, blah, blah.
It's pretty much around like 40, 40, 45 to $50 million.
I was like, well, I think this is bigger than that $50 million that they could have offered me.
If I really wanted that money, then I could have just be cool with the Turkish government and play in every commercial possible.
I could have made close to 100 million dollars from the Turkish government, but I didn't.
You know?
So, money comes and goes, man.
There are players in the league become a billionaire, like LeBron James.
What else do you want?
What are you scared of?
You are a billionaire.
If he decides to talk about the things that happened in China or put pressure on Nike to get out of Xinjiang area, I promise you that they cannot do anything to him.
He is the face of the NBA.
He is the face of Nike, you know?
So, Nike is pretty much paying him.
I think they signed him a lifetime contract and gave him $1 billion to shut him up for the things that happened in China, and he took it.
I see this scenario that you're talking about playing out again and again and in different formats.
For example, right now, what everyone's buzzing about is Twitter.
There's a lot of steps being taken to foster free speech on Twitter.
Of course, we know that Elon Musk does have some exposure to China.
We don't necessarily need to talk about that.
We could if you want.
But the point is that there's all these companies that have basically said, we're not going to advertise on Twitter.
But guess where they're doing business?
It's not just China, it's actually many other countries.
You know what's so funny?
I'll tell you this, and I want you to, and whoever is watching this, I want them to think about this.
When the war happened in Ukraine, all these companies, CEOs, organizations, and even some of the athletes, players, or actors, whoever, were standing up for Ukraine, which I am for.
But then one night, right before I go to sleep, I was like, If China, God forbid, happens to attack Taiwan, how many of these companies, organizations, CEOs, people will stand with Taiwan?
All my Boston Celtics coaches went to a game with the Ukraine pin on their chest.
If China ever attacks Taiwan, would you go out there with a Taiwanese flag on your chest?
Zero percent chance.
Zero.
That is the hypocrisy.
That is the one thing that kills me inside because they really do not care.
I promise you.
Actually, a crazy story.
When I was nine years old, I lived in the east side of Turkey where it wasn't that... in a city where it wasn't that educated.
The city called Van.
V-A-N.
And if you're a politician in Turkey, the first thing you do, you attack America, you attack Israel.
And because the base is just so uneducated, all they do is just see that propaganda on TV and they're like, wow, look at our leader.
He's standing up tall against America.
He's standing up tall against Israel.
So let's vote for him.
So if you're a politician and you want to get elected again, you attack America and Israel.
So I remember one day I went downstairs from my apartment to play with my friends.
Who are not even teenagers.
They were 9 years old, 10 years old.
They were burning American flags.
They were burning Israeli flags.
They were breaking crosses.
They said American people are evil.
Jewish people are the most horrible people in the world.
And, you know, we got to do whatever we can to just boycott them or protest them.
They give me a flag to burn it.
I was like, I got so scared.
I threw the flag down.
I ran upstairs to my mom.
I was like, Mom, what do I do?
She said, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but do not hate anyone before you meet them.
And eight years later, I came to America for the first time when I was 17 years old.
When I landed, I was just like, didn't know what to expect.
One of my friends invited me to a dinner.
It was Thanksgiving and Shabbat dinner.
You know, they were Jewish, but they were celebrating Thanksgiving at the same time.
So before I went to her house, I called one of my Turkish friends who lives in America.
I was like, listen, if you don't hear from me for the next two hours, call the police.
This is exactly what I said, because I just didn't know what... Think about this.
The last 17 years you grew up in this propaganda.
I went to their house.
It was like a mixture of like Shabbat and Thanksgiving dinner together.
So it was a very beautiful moment for me.
You know, they pray first, they blast the bread, and then they were cutting turkey and stuff.
And I'm like, this is like the one of the most warmest dinner that I had.
And then I started to think, I'm like, hmm.
Like, are they trying to brainwash me?
Like, what's going on here?
And then I left the dinner and I came home.
I was so sad because I know that there are millions of kids in the Middle East are growing up anti-Semitic, anti-West, anti-American, anti-Christian because of their leader.
We have to do something to change it.
You recently traveled to Israel.
Tell me about that.
One of my friends, when I was playing for Boston Celtics, he was the Consul General of Israel in Boston.
So, he invited me to Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I went.
So, me and him sitting down, having conversations, he was trying to explain me things and stuff.
One of the ladies, I think she was, I believe, over maybe 90 years old, she came with a wheelchair, and she looked up, she was looking at me.
She was like, I've never seen a Jew this tall before.
I started to laugh, the Consul General started to laugh.
I was like, ma'am, you are so sweet, but I'm not Jewish.
And she said, what are you?
I said, I'm Muslim.
And she said, then what are you doing here?
I said, I'm here to learn.
So she started to tear up, right?
And what I learned that day, they made me speak too.
They made me speak everywhere.
Everywhere I go, they making me speak.
Even if I don't know the conversation, they still making me speak.
But that day, I wasn't there to speak.
I was there to learn.
Because you always hear about the Holocaust, you always hear about how many people actually died and what happened to them and stuff, but you don't know the details.
Once you hear these details, these stories from the survivors, then you're like, oh my God, it's not only Jewish people's job to fight against anti-Semitism, it's everybody's job.
I come up with this couple crazy ideas, which people were telling me crazy.
First, I was like, I'm going to start teaching kids in Muslim schools about Holocaust.
Schools are very important, because in Middle East, some of the countries, front of classes in schools, they have flags.
They have American flag and they have Israeli flag.
If you're a student, if you don't step on these flags, you're not allowed to attend the class.
So, I was like, let's change that.
It took me a while, but we found this beautiful school in Brooklyn.
It was a Muslim school.
We started to give this Holocaust initiative to teach the kids about Holocaust, the Muslim kids.
I had a dinner with them once they finished the initiative, and I was like, how was it?
Some of the things that they said warmed my heart so much.
The second thing was, as a Muslim athlete, I was like, I'm going to take a trip to Israel.
We always hear about what's happening between Palestine and Israel and stuff.
I was like, I'm going to go and I'm going to use basketball as a tool to bring two sides together.
We organized a basketball camp.
It was Muslims, Jews, Christians, Druze, and Palestinians and Israelis.
And I went there and I remember coach said, can we just speak for a second?
I was like, yes.
He said, look at this little girl.
She's what?
11, 12, whatever years old.
When her family was very well educated, her family said, there's a basketball camp in Israel.
Would you like to go?
She said, absolutely not.
They are horrible people.
They're murderers, whatever.
And their family said, but Enes is gone.
Then she said, okay, I'm only going to go for one hour just to meet him, shake his hand, get his autograph, take a picture and leave.
She ended up staying for two weeks.
I'm on the same team with her and with one of her teammates.
So I got the rebound.
I'm dribbling the ball.
I pass it to this Jewish kid with a coupon.
He crossed someone over.
He passed to this Palestinian girl and she got a layup and she scored a ball.
While she was coming back, they high-fived each other.
I was like, this is it.
This is how, I know from just one basketball camp, you cannot change the whole problem in Middle East, but it's just a start, you know?
And there's no one can stand against this, you know?
And then after that, I was seeing they were exchanging numbers, they were exchanging social medias.
The mayor came to me and said, two weeks is not enough.
You have to do this in a full year thing.
Then we went to Tel Aviv, then we went to Haifa, It was definitely the most beautiful and warmest basketball game I had.
It's a beautiful, beautiful testimony.
Years ago, I wrote this op-ed, Why Doesn't the World Respond?
First of all, I was looking at Jan Karski.
I know you're familiar with him.
After having seen the Holocaust with his own eyes, he tried to share with the world.
People didn't want to believe.
Similarly, when I started reporting on this murder for organs industry in China, forced organ harvesting, as it's called, When I realized it was true—and by the way, I didn't want to believe it was true—I just kept encountering people that were like me before I was convinced with the data.
How often do you encounter people when you talk about these issues that say, that's not happening?
You've been brainwashed, Dennis.
Some of my teammates or some people in different organizations, different athletes, I said, dude, you're, stop exaggerating.
That's cannot be happening.
You know, there's no, even some people say there's no even concentration camps.
They're just education centers.
I cannot believe these people are still thinking that There's no concentration camps, Tibetans live in peace, or Hong Kong is not under pressure, China is not trying to invade Taiwan.
How blind can you be to not seeing what's going on, you know?
I think the best way to do it is making them sit down with a survivor, with a Tibetan monk, Or with a concentration camp survivor.
With a Hong Konger activist.
We're talking about how much influence the Chinese Communist Party here has.
or just someone from Taiwan, inside of Taiwan.
Making them have an empathy is the most important thing.
Everyone carries a heart.
We're talking about how much influence the Chinese Communist Party here has.
And one thing that both, you know, I've been talking about a lot on the show here, and also I noticed you've been talking about, is the influence of TikTok in America.
So well, tell me what your thoughts are about TikTok.
So, I do have a TikTok account.
I'm going to explain why I actually got one.
Before I started to get TikTok, right, I had a conversation with someone from the Congress and one of my friends, been a long, long time friend.
So my plan was going to get a TikTok account, get verified because I'm an NBA player, and I'm going to start posting things about China and Chinese government and what they're doing in their own app.
They said, well, he said, it's an amazing idea, but get a second phone.
That app, China will watch everything you're doing.
So I literally bought another phone just for that app.
I downloaded it.
So I started posting things on TikTok against the Chinese government.
I was talking about, you know, the Hong Kong.
I was talking about some of the protests that just happened recently, white page protesters.
I was talking about Uyghurs and stuff.
So, just two days ago, they pretty much banned me from posting.
Actually, I still have the email that they sent me.
I can just show it to you if you want.
They said... I guess for... I was violating community guidelines and blah blah whatever.
I was like... I have seen some of the creators are posting the most craziest thing on that app.
But you have a problem with me talking about Tibetans or Hong Kongers or protests that were recently happening?
You have a problem with me talking about COVID and stuff?
I was like, come on, this is just horrible.
So yeah, they banned me from posting right now.
Again, you see this as the long arm of the Chinese Communist Party right here.
Of course.
I mean, they're pretty much brainwashing the whole generation.
Everybody's now addicted to that app.
Everybody's doing whatever they can and embarrassing themselves sometimes to get more likes, to get more views, and all their information is going to the Chinese Communist Party.
I want to focus on a couple of tweets that you had recently.
One of them, you're saying, enough with just the condemning.
We have to start taking some solid action.
So whenever I go sit down and have a conversation with these congressmen, senators, world leaders, presidents, prime ministers, whatever, the one thing I told them, I'm like, listen, you know better than everybody, you know better than me, you know better than all the activists, journalists, you know what's going on in these countries, in these dictatorships.
By you condemning, it's not going to change anything.
Many, many countries condemned the Beijing Olympics.
What happened?
Nothing.
It does bring awareness, yeah, cool, but bringing awareness is not enough anymore.
That's why I was so frustrated with all these countries.
Whenever I had a speech in the Canadian Parliament, whenever I had a conversation in the Sweden Parliament, or Norway, or America, or whoever, you know, I go all around the world.
The first thing I say is, please do not connect.
If you're going to condemn, then I don't want to waste my time talking to you.
So that's why I was like, okay, what can we do to bring some real change, solid actions?
I think the best way to do it is coming up with these bills, sanctions, maybe using Magnusky Act.
I feel like using these to put pressure, not only pressure, but taking some solid action on these dictatorships is the key.
Because condemning, they really don't care about their condemning.
They have the second largest economy in the world, and they're one of the most powerful military, and they're now trying to open up this whole Belt and Initiative Road, and they have all these companies, all these CEOs got tied up, billions of dollars in that.
So you condemning is not going to do or change anything.
When all these athletes descend on a place like Beijing and communist China, what people will say is, hey, it's just about the athletics.
Let's keep the politics out of it.
Human rights are above politics.
That's one.
And two, Athletes plays a very important role in our society right now.
Just because of all these apps, smartphones, social medias, there are so many kids are idolizing us and watching us what we do every day.
When you see the Iranian soccer team are refusing to sing their nationalists and because of the things that are happening in Iran.
When you see people are sacrificing their families and their career for what they believe in.
When you see activists who are getting banned from their country just because they want to amplify what's going on.
And there's a real cost.
Exactly.
This is the thing I'm noticing.
Sacrifice.
That word is so important.
So what is your message to elite athletes in America and around the world?
I will say the first thing is educate yourself.
When you put your signature on these papers and sign multi-million dollar deals with these companies, you're not only putting your signature, you're putting your dignity, you're putting your family name, your last name, everything.
on the paper, you know, and you cannot talk about the things that are happening in America and same time sign with a company like Nike.
And whatever they offer you, just say no, because this, what you stand in is bigger than basketball, bigger than sports, bigger than yourself.
You know, so it's funny, as you were just saying that, you said bigger than yourself, you know, I keep thinking as we're talking today that you believe in something bigger than yourself.
I guess my question is, how important is your faith to you?
I think my faith asks me.
My faith plays a very important role because it always tells me to stand with innocent people, be a voice, always help your neighbor, always help others, always help the people who cannot help
What is your message for people out there in general, like these kids at the basketball camp or the audience watching right now?
We only have one world.
We don't have another.
This is our home.
So we got to make this world better together.
And the second thing is, care about things and have some empathy.
That's what I was telling my teammates all the time.
I'm like, listen, America is not perfect.
But if you're going to criticize America, let me buy your ticket and let's go to these dictatorships together.
Let's go to China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, South Sudan, and I can go on and on.
Turkey.
And let me see if you can even put a tweet out there about these dictatorships.
You'll be in jail and tortured the rest of your life for one tweet.
My manager's wife is Turkish and her dad liked one of my tweets.
He was in jail for 13 days.
Think about it.
That's what I'm trying to show people.
I'm like, listen, America is not perfect.
No country perfect.
We can, you can always find some kind of problem, but we had, we are very blessed and lucky to be in a situation in a country like that.
Um, that is my one message.
I always try to give it to people out there, you know, be a good person.
Always try to help and educate yourself.
Read, you know, reading is important.
Now people are so focused on these, um, Games and smartphones and apps and Playstations and Xbox, whatever, they are just not seeing what's happening in the real world.
I have to ask this one more question.
You changed your last name to Freedom.
Tell me, what does Freedom really mean to you?
Freedom after air, water and food.
I think the freedom is like the most important thing that human being can have.
I remember coming to America for the first time back in 2009.
I had a practice with my teammates and right after the practice, we're all sitting down in a locker room.
We're just looking at our phone.
One of my teammates posted something on Facebook and he was criticizing the president of America.
And I was like, I immediately turned around.
I'm like, dude, what are you doing?
And he said, what happened?
He said, I was like, well, I saw your post.
He said, OK.
I was like, well, you might be in jail tomorrow.
And they all started to laugh.
And one of them said, this is not Turkey.
This is America.
And I was very confused.
I was like, what are you talking about?
Well, they try to tell me about their freedom of speech that we have here, freedom of religion, expression, movement, protest.
And I thought they were talking to Talking a different language because growing up I never had any of those.
I wanted to make that word part of me and carry it everywhere I go.
Put that behind my jersey and literally just go out there and play basketball because every arena I go to, thousands of kids were watching and millions of kids around the world watching that game.
Seeing that freedom, researching that name, why did I take that name, was very important for me.
Now every time I walk on the street and people Screams behind me and say, freedom!
And that is so beautiful.
I absolutely love that.
I have one final question for you.
There's a lot of people in this country who are concerned that some of these freedoms are being reduced if we're not careful.
You know, when I was growing up, obviously, Turkey wasn't the best country, but we still had some freedom until Erdogan took to office.
It wasn't The best, but we still had little freedom.
And people literally didn't care.
They just thought that, hey, the economy's good, my pocket is full, so I'm good.
Why would I care about the things that are happening in my country?
My pocket is full.
Economy's okay.
Not the best, but okay.
So, we're good.
The year goes on.
Things got worse and worse and worse.
And now one dollar is like almost 19 Turkish lira.
Economy is going bad.
People have no freedom.
Things are getting really horrible.
There's been so many terrorist attacks.
And Turkey is now considered a dictatorship.
Because Erdogan is now... It's actually a fact.
It's all over the internet.
Erdogan is now helping these terrorist groups.
In Middle East, Turkey is becoming this terrorist country, unfortunately.
You know?
Because of our leader.
So if we don't educate ourselves in this, I'm not saying America is ever going to turn into be like Turkey, but you never know.
No one ever thought that Turkey is going to become like what is now.
Because Turkey was this modern Muslim country, could be the bridge of Islam and West, but now it's impossible.
Enes Kanter-Freedom, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you all for joining Enes Kanter-Freedom and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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