Erbal to Revisit Turkish ‘Apology Campaign’ in NAASR Lecture

BELMONT, Mass.—On Thurs., Nov. 7, Ayda Erbal of New York University’s (NYU) department of politics will give a lecture entitled, “Mea Culpas, Negotiations, Apologias: Revisiting the ‘Apology’ of Turkish Intellectuals, ” at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) in Belmont.

The recent “We apologize” (“Ozur diliyoruz”) campaign initiated by four Turkish intellectuals and signed by thousands of others was a remarkable yet controversial development in modern Turkish-Armenian relations. It also stands as a unique occurrence in modern Turkish history, since no other similar “apologizing act” has been extended to any other group that has been victimized by state policies.

Although what constitutes a proper apology is well defined in the present cross-disciplinary literature, it is not so clear what exactly acts of apologies are, or their functions in the domestic and international politics of the “sorry nations.” Are apologies new ways of “imagining,” hence transforming, the “nation”? What differentiates a successful apology from a pseudo or a non-apology? What is the difference between apologia and apology?

These are some of the questions Erbal will address while providing a close analysis of both the text and the political context in which the Turkish apology campaign—and counter campaigns—was launched in December 2008. She will discuss the philosophical, linguistic, and political aspects of the Turkish “We apologize” campaign, including the meaning the apology conveys; the limitations of the text itself; and the political implications of the use of a certain language within the apology (e.g., euphemisms, lack of agency, use of passive tense).

Ayda Erbal teaches Middle Eastern politics and democratic theory as adjunct professor of politics at NYU. She is interested in democratic theory, the politics of “post-nationalist” historiographies in transitional settings, the political economy of mass violence and state formation, and the politics of apology. A chapter of her dissertation, “Mea Culpas, Negotiations, Apologias: Revisiting the Turkish Intellectuals’ ‘Apology’ Campaign,” was recently published in Reconciliation, Civil Society, and the Politics of Memory (ed. Birgit Schwelling). She is also a published short-story writer and one of the founding editors of Azad Alik (http://azadalik.wordpress.com), a multilingual politics blog primarily dealing with minority issues in Turkey. An award-winning filmmaker on the side, Erbal is in the process of writing her second narrative short “Meligone.”

The talk begins on Nov. 7 at 8 p.m., at NAASR, 395 Concord Ave. in Belmont. For more information, call (617) 489-1610 or e-mail hq@naasr.org.