NEW YORK (AP) - About 250 people were marching in New York on Friday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the killings of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.
Protesters were demanding that the U.S. government and Turkey acknowledge that the deaths of their ancestors constituted genocide.
They were carrying signs that read “Armenian Genocide” as they marched from St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral to the Turkish Consulate General.
Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I.
The killings are widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.
Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide. It says the toll has been inflated and those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.
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