Hautala was interviewed by Sunday’s Zaman on Turkey and especially on human rights. The Greens/EFA group held earlier this month a meeting in Istanbul to follow-up the constitutional reforms, democratization and EU accession process.[:]

Hautala commented in the interview:

“In any democracy, courts must be truly independent. Turkey has already taken some very good steps with the constitutional reforms, but more needs to follow. And that means that there is no place for the political abuse of the courts, for instance for restrictions on freedom of expression of journalists or other citizens. So, perhaps this is the key issue. Then, of course, you must have seen that the Greens strongly emphasize equal treatment of each citizen before the law, and in this area we are very much concerned about the problem of gay and lesbian people in Turkey. This is not about tradition — this is not about culture — this is about law and the equal treatment of people before the law. We saw that this issue was quite sensitive for the political parties. We hope that the parties will come out of this shyness and stop refusing to address this issue by saying it is an issue of tradition. “

Read the whole interview at:
www.sundayszaman.com/sunday/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=227271