Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has slammed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's remarks about the Armenian Genocide as hate speech.

Erdogan said on Wednesday, April 15 that the deportation of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century was “appropriate at the time.”

The “deportation of Armenian gangs who were massacring Muslims including women, children and elderly people in the Eastern Anatolia region was the most appropriate act at that time,” Erdogan said.

In a series of tweets, Pashinyan said that describing "the victims of the Armenian Genocide and the Ottoman Empire's entire Armenian population, which was sent to death marches, as “Armenian gangs and their supporters”, killing 1.5 million and justifying it by “most reasonable action” is not just new high in denialism,but justification of murder of a nation."

"Above all, doing this on #April24 is an ultimate insult to the #Armenian people and to humanity, extreme #HateSpeech by #Erdogan personally. The world must speak out," Pashinyan said.

April 24, 1915 is the day when a group of Armenian intellectuals was rounded up and assassinated in Constantinople by the Ottoman government. On April 24, Armenians worldwide commemorated the 104th anniversary of the Genocide which continued until 1923. Some three dozen countries, hundreds of local government bodies and international organizations have so far recognized the killings of 1.5 million Armenians as Genocide. Turkey denies to this day.