Politicians and celebrities from around the world have been commemorating the atrocities which were committed against Armenians in 1915 during the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Armenian Remembrance Day is marked on April 24 every year.
World leaders who gave statements included Nancy Pelosi, Democratic leader in the US House of Representatives, Mauricio Macri, president of Argentina, and Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles, home to a large Armenian diaspora community.
Armenian politicians, including president Serzh Sargsyan, attended special ceremonies in Yerevan.
TV star Kim Kardashian, who is of Armenian heritage, and actor George Clooney, who laid flowers in Yerevan, led the celebrity tributes. Clooney, a human rights activist as well as a Hollywood star, is a strong advocate of internationally recognising the events as a genocide.
"We honour the million and a half lives that were lost 101 years ago. And we honour those lives by calling their tragedy by its true name. Genocide. The Armenian Genocide," he said in the Armenian capital.
Armenia says up to 1.5 million people died in 1915-16 as the Ottoman empire split, while Turkey rejects the term genocide and says the number was much smaller.
President Obama gave a carefully worded statement to mark Armenian Remembrance Day, but fell short of using the word “genocide”, reneging on a campaign pledge to do so.
Use of the term ‘genocide’ is highly politicized, with parliaments in France and Germany passing resolutions declaring it as such in recent years, which are fiercely opposed by Turkey.
