Brussels, 14/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - The head of the delegation of the European Union to Turkey, Hansjörg Haber, has stepped down from his post, a spokesperson of the European External Action Service (EEAS), Maja Kocijancic, confirmed at a press briefing on Tuesday 14 June.
Kocijancic said that Haber would leave his post on 1 August and that his successor would be “appointed soon”. Haber, a German national, was appointed to this position on 31 August 2015.
When asked about the reasons for his resignation, the EEAS spokesperson declined to comment. The diplomat was called in May to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, when he was officially notified of the government's displeasure after he had criticised a lack of seriousness on Turkey's part. “We have a saying: 'start like a Turk and end like a German'. But it has been just the opposite here. It started like a German and is being finished like a Turk”, the EU ambassador had said, in reference to the fact that negotiations for the signature of an agreement on the liberalisation of visas for Turkish nationals travelling to the Schengen zone had started well but run into problems.
Relations between Turkey and Germany became frosty after a poem by Jan Böhmermann mocking the authoritarian tendencies of the Turkish president, Recip Tayyep Erdogan, was broadcast on a satirical television programme on the German channel ZDF. The German Bundestag has also adopted a resolution recognising the Armenian genocide of 1915. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)