This was the third acquittal for the peace activist, who has been fighting accusations for the past 13 years that she planted a deadly bomb at the Spice Bazaar. Expert reports attributed the blast to a gas leak, yet the Supreme Court of Appeals, quashing previous court decisions that cleared her, had called for Pınar Selek to be imprisoned for life. Several foreign observers attended the hearing. For Selek, currently living in Germany, the ruling offers the hope that the long judicial nightmare might be coming to an end.

There is clearly cause to applaud the İstanbul court’s decision, but the judicial process in Turkey involves so many twists and turns that Selek’s legal team cannot rule out the possibility that the case could return to the General Criminal Council of the Supreme Court of Appeals or indeed that the public prosecutor might challenge the ruling once more. They see light at the end of the tunnel, but the case has not yet entirely run its course. The İstanbul court will reconvene again in June.

While Pınar Selek, who is also an active women’s rights defender, and her friends were expressing their relief at the positive outcome of the hearing, across the Bosporus, in the district of Ümraniye, a mother of two, Arzu Yıldırım, was shot dead by the abusive partner she had tried to leave.