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Joost Lagendijk, who was the former chair of the delegation to the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, a columnist with the closed dailies Zaman and Today's Zaman and has been living in Turkey for nine years, has been denied entry to Turkey.

Yesterday (September 25) night, Lagendijk, arriving at the İstanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport, was denied entry to the country on the grounds that “he did not get a visa from the Embassy of Turkey in Holland”.

Being told that this was a “new regulation”, Lagendijk was informed this morning (September 26) that he could be deported.

He posted the following Tweet with regards to what he had been experiencing;

Shit! Turk authorities stopped me on my return from Neth at Sabiha Gökcen airport. I am not allowed in. Send back to Neth on 8.30 flight 1/2 Need to apply for a special visa at Turk embassy in Neth. Hope it is only a bureaucratic obstacle and not a decision to block me forever — Joost Lagendijk (@joostlagendijk) September 25, 2016 — Joost Lagendijk (@joostlagendijk) September 25, 2016

Need to apply for a special visa at Turk embassy in Neth. Hope it is only a bureaucratic obstacle and not a decision to block me forever — Joost Lagendijk (@joostlagendijk) September 25, 2016

About Joost Lagendijk

“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 population. He was then charged with public denigration of the Turkish army. Lagendijk expected pressure by the 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 İstanbul. 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 attempt”. (Source: Wikipedia)

(ÇT/DG)