In the wake of the University of California -Los Angeles student council defeating an ant-Israel divestment resolution by a vote of 7-5, the Armenian students are proposing Turkey as the next target to focus attention on the centennial anniversary of the infamous Turkish massacres.

The Armenian Students’ Association held a town hall Thursday to educate students about and receive feedback on a resolution it plans to bring to the undergraduate student government calling for the University of California Board of Regents to divest from the Republic of Turkey.

From 1915 until 1923, Turkish authorities massacred about 1.5 million Armenians in the then-crumbling Ottoman Empire, leading to the seizure of Armenian land and forcing a diaspora of the Armenian people.

“This resolution is economic with a political end,” said Sevana Manukian, a fourth-year human biology and society student and a member of the Armenian Students’ Association. “We want (the Republic of Turkey) to recognize a historical tragedy.”

Morris Sarafian, a third-year political science student and a member of the Armenian Students’ Association, said he feels the Armenian genocide provided a blueprint for persecutors of all subsequent genocides, including the Holocaust.

The Republic of Turkey, which took power in the area after the Ottoman Empire fell, still denies the genocide against Armenians. The Turkish government considers it a crime to bring up Turkey’s role in the Armenian genocide – the government considers it to be “insulting Turkishness,” according to The New York Times.

In 2014, the Human Rights Watch described Turkey as experiencing a “rollback” of human rights, such as its media censorship and police teargassing at the Gezi protests in Istanbul.

April 24, 2015, will mark the centennial of what is considered the start of the Armenian genocide, when hundreds of Armenian intellectuals were arrested and executed by the Ottoman Empire, according to The New York Times.

The group decided to bring the resolution forward now because of the centennial anniversary of the genocide, said Natalie Kalbakian, a third-year political science student and external vice president of the Armenian Students’ Association.