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.
Yeim Yaprak Yldz 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. Yldz 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.
