Turkey has been proposing for years to establish a commission of historians to decide whether the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire should be defined as genocide. Turkish authorities also say that the country’s archives are open to researchers, accusing their counterparts in Armenia for failing to do the same.

Yektan Türkyılmaz, a historian focusing on collective violence who has worked in both Turkish and Armenian archives, discussed the validity of such claims with Ahval.