Istanbul's 18th Heavy Penal Court acquitted all 13 defendants in the controversial “Odatv trial” on April 12. Odatv is a staunchly secular news website in Turkey that got into trouble in 2010 with the followers of the Pennsylvania-based preacher Fethullah Gulen in the judiciary and national police department — a network that many Turks refer to as the Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization, or FETO.

Originally composed of 14 defendants — Kasif Kozinoglu, a high-ranking official in Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization, died in 2011 — the Odatv suspects were charged with being a front for the alleged Ergenekon network. Even though Turks of all political stripes had suspected for years that a “deep state” structure often sowed chaos and disorder in their country — carrying out assassinations and false flag operations in order to undermine and overthrow democratically elected governments — the Ergenekon trials became infamous for evidence tampering, late-night arrests, secret witnesses and denial of defense.

By August 2013, several hundred military officers, police officers, academics and journalists were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. At the time, however, it hardly felt like justice was served. Indeed, once the alliance between Gulenist cadres in the Turkish state and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government ended in late 2013, many of the suspects in Ergenekon-related cases were either acquitted or released from prison.

Thus, the Istanbul court’s April 12 decision was no surprise. In fact, in the penultimate hearing on Feb. 15, the prosecutor had advised the judges to release the defendants.