It all goes back to the fateful day when a suspicious coup attempt took place on July 15, 2016 in Turkey.

Fethullah Gülen, the CIA asset, Erdoğan’s nearly life-long partner in crime, his man behind the scenes, the long-time terrorist planner and brain behind the web of schools around the world known for their spying activities and for recruiting terrorists, is said to have attempted to topple the Turkish government. The life-long ideological and personal buddies had fallen apart after a time of having differences on how to rule Turkey and open up to the world to establish the “Turkish Empire,” a reenactment of the long time fallen “Ottoman Empire.”

The organizations that were handed over to Fethullah Gülen by Erdoğan in Turkey would undergo a cleaning by the Turkish government to get rid of the secret or open Gülen members after the failed coup attempt. This cleansing was not going to be easy since Erdoğan had left the ministries of Justice, Internal Affairs, security, and many others high level departments to become Fethullah’s playground, and practice fields for his world-wide operation. These two ideological comrades of Islam were BFF after all in those beautiful old days.

Firings and imprisonment of thousands of police officers, judges, prosecutors, military officers, teachers followed the suspicious coup attempt Erdoğan was able to survive. Many believe the coup was staged or at least known by Erdoğan, due to countless number of contradictions, lies, unaccountable disappearances of very high officials close to Erdoğan at the time, collusions between supposed enemies, and upright ineptitudes and very obvious “mistakes” of the coup planners that allowed him to escape very easily.

Anybody who had ties to the previous underground partner of the Turkish government was arrested, fired, passport confiscated, and imprisoned. Gülen, living in Pennsylvania with a recommendation letter from CIA officials was not the respected primary school graduate religious leader anymore in Turkey.

This was unfortunate for the Portland Trailblazers player Enes Kanter in the US. When Erdoğan and Gülen were friends he never gave a second thought in openly showing his support and admiration for the CIA asset Fethullah Gülen. Actually, it was the thing to do, when you go with the crowd, if the crowd is the government and its allies. Especially if you wanted to land a job, a contract, a favor, mainly anything in Turkey, a corruption ridden NATO member country, Fethullah was your guy.

However, after the coup, this basketball player, Kanter, fan of power, a supporter of Gülen, the owner of hundreds of Islamic charter schools in the US and the world, dropped from favor in Turkey as he chose to stay on the “mystic” CIA asset cleric Gülen’s side instead of choosing Erdoğan.

It was OK for Kanter as long as he stayed in the US and did not enter Turkey where he would be arrested as soon as his plane lands in Istanbul.

However, now the issue gets more complicated when Kanter will be playing in the NBA in the Portland Trail Blazers team against the Golden Gate Warriors. The problem is that Kanter cannot be shown on TVs in Turkey.

In a country that takes political dissent too seriously, his open support for the billionaire religious cleric Fethullah could not be forgiven. Those who addressed the imprisoned Kurdish leader as “Mr. Öcalan² were prosecuted for treason or spreading terrorist propaganda. The Turkish state insisted that people should only call the Kurdish leader, “The head of terrorists,” and never add “Mr.” as his title. In this environment basketball player Kanter’s passport was revoked and although he is a Turkish citizen he is not allowed to play in the national team.

The problem of showing the NBA matches with Kanter playing was resolved by the Turkish TV station by cancelling the broadcast of any game Kanter appears in. This way Turkish government thinks they can reduce the presence of its opposition.

However, people who only want to enjoy a Sunday match on TV think otherwise. People have had enough of the ultra-paranoid measures of the Turkish state that imprisons journalists, fires dissenting professors, bans Wikipedia, shuts down publications, arrests folk singers, arrests any dissent, detains LGBTQ members, raids music cultural centers, even imprisons any opposition party members who dare to criticize the government in the National Assembly.