Sukur, From Turkish Football Star to Uber Driver

From a star player for the Turkish national football team, with which he still holds the record for goals scored, to a public enemy, exiled to the United States, where he now finds himself forced to work as an Uber driver and other odd jobs to make ends meet. This is the story of former football star Hakan Sukur, who also played in Italy with Torino, Inter, and Parma, with whom he won the Coppa Italia. Now Sukur confesses his new situation in an interview with Germany's Welt am Sonntag. The cause of his downfall, he claims, is his opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which has reportedly led to the freezing of all his assets in his home country. "He took everything from me. My right to freedom, my right to explain myself, to express myself, my right to work," accuses the former player, once close to the Sultan of Ankara before his sudden estrangement. After retiring from football in 2008 with quasi-national hero status, Sukur joined the AKP, Erdogan's party, in 2011. Riding the wave of his sporting fame, he even entered parliament, but resigned in 2013 following a corruption investigation against the current president. In 2015, Sukur left the country for the United States after the situation at home became too much for him. "My wife's shop was hit by stones, and my children were harassed in the street. I received threats after every statement I made," he told the German Sunday paper. But even after fleeing to the States, things didn't improve. "When I left," he says, "they locked up my father. And everything I owned was confiscated." Before ending up as an Uber driver in Washington, Sukur even attempted to open a restaurant in the American capital, which he later closed after facing pressure. "Strange people would come to my bar and start playing traditional Turkish music," he explains. After these incidents, he was placed under police protection for a time, and even the FBI got involved. In 2016, he was also accused of participating in the attempted coup against Erdogan, which the Turkish president claimed was orchestrated by his rival Fethullah Gulen. Since then, an arrest warrant has been issued, preventing him from ever returning to Turkey. This fate, albeit with all the inherent differences, links him to that of another athlete, NBA basketball player Enes Kanter, who plays for the Boston Celtics. Ankara even revoked Kanter's citizenship in 2017 after his support for Gulen and a series of inflammatory statements against Erdogan.