This paper examines the legal regulation of treasure hunting practices in Turkey’s Kurdistan. In recent decades, treasure hunting has emerged as an important means for the pursuit of wealth in Kurdish areas of Turkey, where the formal economic sector has been devastated by state violence and neoliberal economic reforms. Reduced possibilities of making a living have led thousands of people to search for treasures believed to be buried by the victims of the Armenian Genocide, in abandoned Armenian graveyards, among the ruins of old monasteries, in the backyards of old Armenian houses, and remote rural caves. In addition to exploring new theoretical and methodological perspectives on the afterlife of a genocide, my paper advances the hypothesis that the “underground” activities of Kurdish treasure hunters create a new domain of practice in which the issue of genocide has to be dealt with by the state unintentionally and inevitably. In the context of the state’s recognition of the material existence of “Armenian treasures,” and denial of the origins of that treasure, I will explore how the ruined landscape and treasure excavations are legally constructed and controlled.