Thousands of master’s theses and Ph.D. dissertations in the social sciences are written each year in Turkey. The Higher Education Board (YOK) keeps an electronic database of their topics and titles. A search in the database of dissertations on the Armenian genocide returns a striking result: Only four theses have been written on the issue and, as their titles immediately suggest, they all reflect Turkey’s official position on the massacres.

The four titles are as follows: “Armenian genocide claims in view of international law,” “The importance of pressure groups, lobby activities within the context of the so-called Armenian genocide,” “Turkish-Armenian relations in history and the impact of Armenian genocide claims on Turkey’s European Union membership process” and “Armenian genocide claims in international law.”

That is all Turkish universities have been able to produce in terms of theses on the topic of the Armenian genocide. How is this possible? Are there no academics willing to write dissertations contesting Turkey’s official history line and argue, for instance, that the 1915 events were a genocide? Or is there a state mechanism in place that doesn’t leave it up to chance?

A Dec. 12 report in the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos reveals that academics working on dissertations about the Armenian genocide are under the close scrutiny of the Turkish Historical Society (TTK). According to Agos, the TTK has asked YOK for the details of academics studying the Armenian issue and the YOK chairman, in turn, has asked universities to provide that information. A document Agos published indicates that the YOK chairman had asked universities to supply “the names of master’s and doctoral students working on the Armenian problem, the titles of their researches and contact information, in view of making them available to the Turkish Historical Society in the work it conducts.”