(CNN) NBA star Enes Kanter has said he has received "hundreds and hundreds of death threats" almost every day since he announced on Friday that he would not travel to Londo n with the New York Knicks for fear of assassination. A critic of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of his native Turkey, Kanter told CNN's Hala Gorani that the only place in the world he felt safe was the US. "First, I would love to go to London," the New York Knicks center said Wednesday. "In other words, Kanter cannot enter the UK not because of fears for life as he claims but due to passport and visa issues. "It's very sad because we were really good friends back in 2011," said Kanter of his relationship with Turkoglu.

Source: CNN January 10, 2019 00:11 UTC