Product Code Database
Joost Lagendijk (; born 8 June 1957) is a Dutch politician and columnist. From 2009 to 2012, he was a senior adviser at the Istanbul Policy Center at Sabancı University. He is a former Member of the European Parliament from GroenLinks (G/EFA) and served as the joint chairman of the Turkey-EU Parliamentarians delegation.
Professionally he worked for the publisher SUA between 1987 and 1988. In 1988 he became chairman and publisher of the "Tijdschrift Maatschappelijk Welzijn" (Magazine for Social Work). In 1994 he became publisher for Babylon-De Geus.
In 1997, he became GroenLinks's campaign coordinator for the 1998 general elections.
In 1999, he headed the GroenLinks electoral list for the European elections. He, and with him three other Dutch Greens, were elected into parliament. After the elections, he became chair of the delegation to the EU–Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, which he still is, and thereby a member of the conference of Delegation leaders. He became also member for the delegation for relations with the Southeast European countries, which he left following the 2004 elections.
In a controversial leadership election in 2004, fellow MEP Kathalijne Buitenweg was elected to head the GroenLinks list in the European Elections instead of Lagendijk. After the 2004 elections he became a member of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, substitute for the Committee on Transport and Tourism and member of the delegation for relations with the Gulf States, including Yemen. He was chair of the Joint Parliamentary Committee with Turkey.
Lagendijk has published two books on European foreign affairs, together with Labour MEP Jan Marinus Wiersma. In 2000 they published "Brussel - Warschau - Kiev. Op zoek naar de grenzen van de Europese Unie" ("Brussels-Warsaw-Kyiv, searching for the borders of the European Union") concerning EU enlargement. In 2004 they published "Na Mars komt Venus. Een Europees antwoord op Bush" ("After Mars comes Venus. A European answer to Bush") concerning the EU's peace and nation-building policy.
As MEP Lagendijk has shown particular interest for the Balkan-region and Turkey, and especially in keeping the peace in this unstable region. His pacifism background is clearly influential there. In December 2005, he visited Turkey to attend the trial against Orhan Pamuk and speak at an event for the Greens of Turkey. In his speech he criticized the military of Turkey for using the violence by the PKK as justification for violence against the Kurdish people population. He was then charged with public denigration of the Turkish army. Lagendijk expected pressure by the Mass media in Turkey to force prosecutors to drop charges. Indeed, the prosecutor declined to prosecute, referring to the Turkish constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights, and the case was dropped.
In 2009, Lagendijk left the European Parliament and moved to Istanbul. After briefly writing for the Radikal daily newspaper, Lagendijk started as a columnist for the Today's Zaman newspaper. From 2009 until 2012, he worked as a senior advisor for the Istanbul Policy Center of Sabancı University. Afterwards, he lectured at Süleyman Şah University, until it was closed by the Turkish authorities in the wake of the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt.
|
|
