Performing Public Confessions: Avowal and Disavowal of State Violence in Turkey

Performing Public Confessions: Avowal and Disavowal of State Violence in Turkey - Paperback

$63.00
$63.00
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Performing Public Confessions: Avowal and Disavowal of State Violence in Turkey
  • Performing Public Confessions: Avowal and Disavowal of State Violence in Turkey
Performing Public Confessions: Avowal and Disavowal of State Violence in Turkey - Paperback

Performing Public Confessions: Avowal and Disavowal of State Violence in Turkey - Paperback

by Yeşim Yaprak Yıldız
$63.00
$63.00

Book Overview

It is widely thought that confessions from perpetrators of state violence promote accountability, reconciliation, and justice. Performing Public Confessions offers a challenge to this view through a critical examination of perpetrators' narratives, analyzing them as performances that shape public perceptions of state violence and responsibility. With a focus on Turkey, this book develops new insights into the performative aspects of confessions and what they reveal about the dominant social, moral, and political order.

Yeşim Yaprak Yıldız explores public confessions by Turkish state actors implicated in atrocities against Kurds during the 1990s, showing that their accounts often function to obscure rather than clarify responsibility. Through close readings of perpetrators' rhetorical strategies, audience reactions, and media representations, she demonstrates that confessions are rarely straightforward admissions of guilt. Instead, they frequently perpetuate mechanisms of denial, silence, evasion, and disavowal, normalizing atrocities, reinforcing impunity, and masking the structural nature of state violence. Yıldız argues that perpetrators' narratives, when placed in their social contexts, illuminate the underlying moral and political frameworks that govern Turkish society. Bringing together theoretical reflections with rich analysis of case studies, this book uncovers the political and ethical limitations of public confessions.
ISBN9780231222310
Author Yeşim Yaprak Yıldız
PublisherColumbia University Press
GenreHistory, Education, and Society & culture
FormatPaperback
PublishedMay 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages296
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

History Nonfiction Social Science

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