LBS- Turkish newspaper Sabah reported on Wednesday that New York Knicks big man, Enes Kanter, has been indicted in his home country for insulting ex-NBA player Hedo Turkoglu, who is also a Turkey native.
Turkoglu, who played in the league for 15 seasons, now serves as the president of the Turkish Basketball Federation and is a chief advisor to Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. EuroHoops provided some translated details of the charges Kanter is facing: An indictment was filed on the grounds that Kanter has “insulted Turkoglu more than once on different dates”, per the report by Sabah. The Istanbul Cyber Crimes Investigation Bureau prepared the indictment which is based on “humiliating and hurtful messages” made by Kanter against Turkoglu on his social media. The indictment mentions that even though Kanter won’t appear before the judge, he will be tried in absentia because he “has to be punished for the charges of insult”. The case will be heard before the Assize Court. Kanter has long been a vocal critic of Erdogan as well as a supporter of exiled opposition cleric Fetullah Gulen. ------ I know a lot of people, - myself included - have been quick to question the virtues of our current justice system, but if foreign countries allow for the indictment of internet insults then I think were comparatively doing pretty damn good for ourselves. I hesitate to call America "great" due to the political undertones that now carries, but - as much as I'd like to see the President detained - I'm glad I live in place where he quite obviously has to do hell of a lot more than chirp someone on social media before he has to start worrying about his grasp on the soap. This nation has a hell of a lot of its own problems, but only like a couple dozen of them could be solved if we start handing out sentencing for subtweeting stateside. While Turkish countrymen engaging in trivial trash talk from opposite sides of the world is hilariously fitting as far as white-on-white crime is concerned, this is kinda like a "chicken or the egg" situation. What comes first, war-torn nations that are stewing in their own political turmoil, orrrr a government that prioritizes imprisoning those that speak freely against it? I can't be certain, but the fact that the Istanbul Cyber Crimes Investigation Bureau has nothing better to do than scroll through Enes Kanter's timeline is probably why Enes Kanter had no problem tweeting the things that got him excommunicated from his family in Istanbul in the first place. We're talking about an NBA basketball player whose living the good life as a multi-millionaire over in the US-of-A. Sort of seems like overkill to prosecute him for online rudeness towards his basketball playing brethren when he's already a homecoming away from death row for publicly disrespecting a dictator. Not that a country as corrupt as Turkey needs it, but there's a sufficient amount of evidence to convict Enes Kanter if his death wish is the same as a fascist's empty command that he head back to a broken home. Trying to add to it by claiming that a 38 year old former pro athlete was cyber bullied? At the risk of telling a borderline 3rd world country how to execute justice and/or encouraging computer generated criticisms, I'm going to say that declaring them worthy of incarceration only justifies them. So, considering he's willing to go nose-to-nose with LeBron James, I don't think Enes Kanter is too worried about going twit-for-tat with an opponent who is equally as unlikely to actually do something about it...
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