US political commentator Cenk Uygur and online broadcaster Hasan Piker said on Sunday that they had been barred from entering the UK, claiming British authorities cited their public comments about Israel as the reason for the decision.
Uygur, co-founder of The Young Turks, a US-based online political news and commentary network, said he learned of the restriction while attempting to board a flight to London, where he was scheduled to attend the SXSW London festival and deliver a speech at Oxford.
As part of a series of posts on X, Uygur said British authorities informed him that he had been deemed “a serious risk to the public order.”
“The British government is saying they’re banning me because I am ‘a serious risk to the public order’ due to my criticism of Israel,” he wrote.
He also said authorities considered his assertions regarding Israeli influence in US politics to be antisemitic, despite his insistence that his remarks were factual.
Uygur argued that he was not being denied entry because of comments about the UK itself, but rather over the statements made in the United States concerning Israel.
