Enes Kanter Freedom Rips Elon Musk Censoring Twitter at Turkish Government’s Whim: ‘Literally Bowing Down to a Dictatorship’

The way Enes Kanter Freedom sees it, Elon Musk lost the right to call himself a free speech champion by obeying the Turkish government’s demand that critics be silenced on Twitter.

The Turkish-American former NBA star joined CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday to discuss the implications of Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan facing a runoff election. Kanter Freedom has been an outspoken critic of the human rights abuses and media censorship that the Turkish government has committed under Erdoğan’s regime. He predicted the Turkish president would foment chaos before accepting any possible defeat in the contentious election.

From there, Collins turned the conversation to Musk since Twitter’s Global Government Affairs account recently announced that “in response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey.” Musk has often portrayed himself as a free-speech absolutist. Still, he has defended Twitter’s content censorship in Turkey and was lambasted by critics who accused him of caving to their government.

Asked for his thoughts about this, Kanter Freedom was far from impressed:

I don’t want to hear about Elon Musk talking about free speech ever again. He’s literally bowing down to a dictatorship. The Turkish government called Elon to pretty much tell him if you don’t ban a couple accounts, then we’re going to shut down the whole app in Turkey. And he picked business and money over his morals and principles. I don’t want to hear about him talking about free speech ever again.

Watch above via CNN.