Nazli Ilicak was in jail for 1,197 days and Ahmet Altan for 1,138 days before both were released the night of Nov. 4. Their release caused some relief among watchers of Turkey’s autocratic practices and nourished hopes that a normalcy of sorts could return to the country.

However, many have their doubts about any real reconciliation in Turkey and were trying to figure out whether the release of the two journalists might conceal some other sinister aims of Turkey’s increasingly autocratic regime.

Both Ilicak and Altan are veteran journalists and iconic names in Turkey. They have become internationally-acclaimed symbols of the Turkish government's violation of freedom of speech in the aftermath of the botched coup attempt of July 15, 2016. The two writers are the leading victims of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on journalists that made Turkey earn the reputation of being the “biggest jailer of journalists in the world.” Indeed, the number of journalists jailed in Turkey far exceeded those in Iran, Egypt, Russia and China combined, countries with very dismal records on freedom of the press.

Ilicak, 75, is a senior columnist who had a long career marked by a continuous struggle against military takeovers in Turkey. Her father was a victim of the first of a series of military coups, in 1960, that removed the center-right government. She was a teenager at the time and witnessed the arrest of her father, who was a minister in the government. The prime minister was executed by the military regime a year later. Ilicak made her reputation as an ardent opponent of military interventions. She married a media tycoon in the 1970s and became a fiery columnist in her husband’s flagship conservative newspaper