Former Turkey legend Hakan Sukur is now an Uber driver
Posted: Wed Jan 15, 2020 4:56 pm
Hakan Sukur was an icon of Turkish football in the late 90s and 2000s but after a stint in politics in Turkey he was run out of his home country and is now an Uber driver.
The former Blackburn Rovers, Inter and Galatasaray striker retired from football in 2008 after a third stint with the Istanbul based side, where he is a club legend.
In 2011 he became a member of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey before leaving in 2015. He fled the country to the US in 2017 and revealed in an interview with German outlet Welt am Sonntag, via the Daily Mail, that he now drives an Uber. "I have nothing left, Erdogan took everything: my right to liberty, freedom of expression and right to work," he explained that Turkish President Erdogan ran him out of the country with a warrant for his arrest over an alleged coup he was apparently part of.
"Nobody seems able to explain what my role in this coup was supposed to be. I never did anything illegal, I am not a traitor or a terrorist.
"I might be an enemy [of] this government, but not the state or the Turkish nation. I love my country. After the split with Erdogan, I started to receive threats. My wife's shop was attacked, my children were harassed, my father put in prison and all my assets confiscated.
"So I moved to the United States, initially running a cafe in California, but strange people kept coming into the bar. Now I drive for Uber and I sell books."
https://www.sportbible.com/football/wei ... r-20200114