A Turkish court has slashed the jail sentence for a man who shot his wife in the leg and almost killed her because she provoked him by asking him why he was not turning up for their divorce hearings.

Arzu Yelken, 29, was married to her husband for 11 years, but, decided to divorce him after six years because he was repeatedly cheating on her and was a regular drug user who frequently beat her.

She filed the case at a local divorce court, but the court refused to allow the divorce to go ahead because her husband, identified only as, H. Yelken, did not bother to turn up for the hearings.

After the third no-show, she had decided to go round to his house and try and persuade him to turn up for the hearings so that the divorce could go through, but when he opened the door she did not even get a chance to speak, because he exploded in anger when he saw her, grabbed a double barrel shotgun, and shot her as she fled.

The shot tore into her leg, damaging it so severely that it needed to be amputated, and he then tried to shoot her with the second barrel, but the gun jammed.

She was rushed to hospital, where surgeons could not save the leg and had to be amputated. Her husband turned himself in at the police station later and complained that she had provoked him by turning up at his home.

He was taken to court, and jailed for “aggravated attempted murder” in the first instance, but it has now been reduced on appeal to 13 years and six months after the court ruled that he had been provoked by his wife when she turned up at his home.

The mother of two who who is living in Kepez district in Antalya in southern Turkey had to give up her job as a chef in a restaurant and is now struggling to raise her two children.

Her husband, who worked as a house painter, apologised to the court for the fact that he ruined the lives of his children.