The pendulum of Turkish justice that has been crashing academics for their real and invented political dissent since 2016 has swung back. On July 26, the Turkish Constitutional Court, in a stunning reversal, ruled that sentences given to ten Academics for Peace who protested a massacre of Kurdish civilians by the Turkish army violated their freedom of expression.

The verdict has denounced the government charge of “propagandizing for a terrorist organization.” The accusation was aired in public speeches by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who repeatedly called the academics “traitors.”