Armenian President Serge Sarkisian presided over a memorial service to mark the 100th anniversary of the killing of 1.5 Armenians in World War One.

Sarkisian spoke to a somber crowd of dignitaries Friday under cloudy skies at the Armenian Genocide Memorial near the capital, Yerevan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande were among those attending the ceremony, which included a minute of silence to honor the victims.

They and other leaders each contributed a single yellow rose to the center of a wreath fashioned to resemble the forget-me-not, a flower serving as the symbol of the commemoration.

Hundreds of thousands of people have come to Yerevan to commemorate the killings, an event that has generated contention among the nations involved and their allies.

Turkey denies the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was a genocide. It says the Armenians died during fighting in a civil war in which they were aided by the Russians. It says the number of deaths is far fewer than 1.5 million.

Turkey formally protests against any government that calls the killings a genocide. It recalled its representative to the Vatican earlier this month after Pope Francis called the Armenian massacre the first genocide of the 20th century.

US statement

U.S. President Barack Obama released a statement Thursday in which he commemorated the killings, calling them a “massacre,” “a terrible carnage,” and “horrific violence,” but did not use the word genocide. The statement raised the ire of U.S.-Armenian interest groups, who said the president should have taken a stronger stand.

On Thursday, German President Joachim Gauck for the first time called the killings a genocide and said Germany bears some of the responsibility.

Gauck said at a service in the Berlin Cathedral that as a wartime ally of the Ottoman Empire, German soldiers took part in planning and implementing deportations of Armenians.

“Women, men, children, and the elderly were indiscriminately sent on death marches, banished without any protection or food to the steppe and the desert, burned alive, chased, beaten, and shot to death,” he said. “This planned and calculated criminal act targeted Armenians for a sole reason: because they were Armenians.”

The Armenian church granted sainthood to the victims during a service Thursday in Echmiadzin, a town that provided sanctuary for those escaping the killings.
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