Lagendijk to Teach at Sabancı University

From TDZ:

Joost Lagendijk, a Dutch Green party member of the European Parliament and co-chairman of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, will move to Turkey next year and teach at a university in İstanbul, a statement from his office said yesterday.

He is leaving politics in Brussels to take up a lecturing post at Sabancı University and work as a senior advisor at the İstanbul Policy Center (IPC) starting July 1, 2009. Lagendijk will lecture on the European Union at the university and will be working on Turkey and the EU at the IPC, according to the statement. "After European Parliament elections in June 2009, I will stop my work as an MEP. My wish to stay involved with EU enlargement and Turkey issues and use my experience in this area came true. I am very much looking forward to my new job at Sabancı University and also to moving to İstanbul, a fantastic city," Lagendijk said.
Lagendijk has been a member of the European Parliament since 1998 and has been the co-chairman of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee since 2002. He has also worked as rapporteur of the European Parliament on Kosovo since 2005. He announced in April that he would not run for the European Parliament in next year's elections.

"As you know my personal situation has changed lately and to be honest I am sometimes getting fed up with all the traveling to Turkey, to the Balkans and Strasbourg. I want the last part of my working life to be quieter and not [spent] at airports and on airplanes all the time," Lagendijk had told Today's Zaman in April, referring to the fact that he has been married to Nevin Sungur, a senior reporter for the NTV news channel, since October 2006.