Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejects an Israeli proposal to recognize the Ottoman Empire’s World War I-era mass killing of Armenians as genocide. Erdogan dismisses the measure and instead points to the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, effectively redirecting the genocide accusation toward Israel. The Israeli proposal is reported to have been approved by Israel’s cabinet on Sunday, but it still requires parliamentary approval before it can be enacted. The reports also say relations between Türkiye and Israel continue to deteriorate amid the dispute. Türkiye has long opposed official recognition of the 1915 Armenian mass killings as genocide. The government denies the killings amounted to genocide, disputing the scale of the death toll and saying those who died were caught up in civil conflict and unrest. Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman authorities around the time of World War I, a period widely regarded by many scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Armenians and advocacy groups have urged governments to formally recognize the killings as genocide, and the latest Israeli move is framed as part of that broader diplomatic and political contest.