"I regret it," C.M.A. said as he made his final appeal to the court over the murder of Pınar Gültekin, a young university student whose body was found burned in southwestern Turkey two years ago. The case, which shook Turkey regardless of how it is accustomed to femicides, came to a close yesterday with a ruling that will likely draw the public ire.

A court in Muğla province initially handed down aggravated life imprisonment for C.M.A. The sentence was commuted to 23 years in prison on the grounds that the incident was a result of "unjust provocation," a controversial interpretation of laws that grant lenient sentences in some femicide cases. "Unjust provocation," in this case, was apparently what C.M.A called "blackmail" by his former girlfriend Pınar Gültekin. The defendant had long claimed that the victim took his indecent photos and threatened to release them to the public if he did not pay, while lawyers for the victim’s family had denied the allegations.

C.M.A. said he did not "plot" the murder as plaintiffs claimed and denied claims that his family helped him to cover up the murder. His family members, including his parents and brother, were acquitted in yesterday’s final hearing, where they stood trial on charges of aiding and abetting the defendant.

The 27-year-old victim disappeared on Jun. 16, 2020. Security forces had launched a probe into her disappearance and C.M.A was detained as a suspect in her disappearance. When her remains were found, he admitted to strangling P.G. to death before burning her corpse and cramming her body parts into a barrel he dumped in a forest. He has been on trial on charges of torturing someone to death and the prosecutors have asked for a strict sentence for C.M.A., accused of burning Gültekin while she was still "alive" after he squeezed her neck.