Kanter to skip trip, fears for safety

Fearing he might be murdered by Turkish spies, Enes Kanter said he will not travel with the Knicks to London for their regular season game against the Wizards on Jan. 17.

Kanter, a wanted criminal in Turkey for speaking out against the country’s president, also had his passport revoked and cannot fly to Europe.

“I talked to the front office and they said I’m not going because of that freaking lunatic, the Turkish president [ Recep Tayyip Erdogan],” Kanter said. “There’s a chance that I can get killed out there.”

Kanter, who is Turkish, has been an outspoken critic of the president, once referring to him as “the Hitler of our century.”

Asked about the probability of getting murdered in Europe, Kanter said,

“Oh yeah. Easy. They have a lot of spies there. I can be killed easily. It would be a very ugly situation.”

In May 2017, Kanter was detained for several hours at an airport in Romania after the Turkish government canceled his travel documents.

Later that year, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported that prosecutors were seeking more than four years in jail for Kanter on charges that he had insulted Erdogan on social media.

SATURDAY’S GAME

Nuggets 123, Hornets A

110: Nikola Jokic scored a season-high 39 points and grabbed 12 rebounds, reserve Paul Millsap added 18 points and Western Conference-leading Denver won its 10th in a row at home.

At 26-11, the Nuggets are off to their best NBA start in franchise history. This also marks the latest they’ve been in first place in the conference since March 16, 1977.