The discussions have heated with respect to the human skeletons found during renovations at the courtyard of a historical building, in Diyarbakir, Turkey, which used to be a prison, and afterwards Turkey’s Organization for Gendarmerie Intelligence and Fight against Terrorism (JITEM) headquarters.  

It was initially announced that the skeletons belonged to the Kurds who were killed by JITEM in the 1990s, but Diyarbakir’s Deputy Prosecutor General stated that these skeletons are older.    

Also, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP Galip Ensaroglu noted, in this regard, that the aforementioned prison was built in the 1880s, and that these skeletons date back to those years. 

And Turkish Taraf daily’s columnist Ayhan Aktar publicized the report by the Armenian Tomas Migirdicyan, who had worked as a translator for the British consulate in Diyarbakir in 1915. According to this report, the Armenians used to be gathered in this prison and subsequently killed. It is noted that Tomas Migirdicyan’s report, which is kept in the American archives, thoroughly depicts the Diyarbakir massacres.      

Around thirty skeletons are already discovered in the area of the former JITEM headquarters.