The Guardian · US news · Original story
I once saw Enes Kanter speak truth to power. Now he only punches down | Bryan Armen Graham
Nearly a decade after I watched him defy Erdoğan at great personal cost, the ex-NBA player is using his hard-won freedom to turn transgender people into a punchline
Nine years ago, I watched Enes Kanter ask America to take him in. It was May 2017, inside the National Basketball Players Association’s offices in midtown Manhattan. Kanter had just returned from a frightening detention at Bucharest airport, where Romanian border police told him Turkey had canceled his passport. He’d just turned 25, an NBA center with a green card and no country he could safely call home.
“I’m open for adoption,” he joked from the head of a table in a nondescript conference room, addressing a dozen reporters hastily summoned by his manager. Then he turned serious: “My next move is to just become an American citizen.”
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Bryan Armen Graham · Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 2:00 AM
US news | The Guardian
Nearly a decade after I watched him defy Erdoğan at great personal cost, the ex-NBA player is using his hard-won freedom to turn transgender people into a punchline
Nine years ago, I watched Enes Kanter ask America to take him in. It was May 2017, inside the National Basketball Players Association’s offices in midtown Manhattan. Kanter had just returned from a frightening detention at Bucharest airport, where Romanian border police told him Turkey had canceled his passport. He’d just turned 25, an NBA center with a green card and no country he could safely call home.
“I’m open for adoption,” he joked from the head of a table in a nondescript conference room, addressing a dozen reporters hastily summoned by his manager. Then he turned serious: “My next move is to just become an American citizen.”
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