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Turkey should no longer cover for the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Empire, and recognize the Armenian genocide, Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan said on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the start of the mass killings.

“We want the modern Turkish authorities to shed the burden of the actions of the Ottoman Empire,” Serzh Sargsyan told RT doing a sit-down interview in capital Yerevan. “The modern authorities did not commit the genocide, but when they try to justify it, they take responsibility for it.”

Following orders issued from Constantinople in April 1915, Turkish officials began to arrest, deport, torture and ultimately murder members of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian minority, who were labeled disloyal during World War I. By 1922, an alleged 1 to 1.5 million people – more than two-thirds of all Armenians in the Empire – were dead. 

Turkey insists that the numbers of the dead was significantly smaller, and as many Turks died, trying to quell uprisings from rebel Armenians, who fought alongside the invading Russians. While officials have increasingly owned up to some of the atrocities, they have vehemently denied the label genocide. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan strongly condemned Pope Francis for using the term earlier this month.

Despite disagreements, in 2009, Erevan and Ankara signed a “historic” deal, establishing diplomatic relations, and opening borders for the first time since 1993, but neither the Armenian, nor the Turkish parliament have ratified it.

“The Turks don’t want, from what they have shown, to establish relations. We have demonstrated on numerous occasions that the very moment that Turkey ratifies the document, we are ratifying it,” said Sargsyan.

“We haven’t posed any preconditions to Turks. But the Turkish side, the Turkish leadership, to be precise, have always come up with this or that or that precondition,” said the Armenian president.

Sargsyan said the White House stance on the Armenian Genocide was insincere.

“I’ve spoken with US officials. No one there denies the genocide, but it is simply not in America’s national interest to recognize it officially.”