Turkey has summoned the ambassador from the United States to protest a U.S. Senate resolution recognizing the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.

U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield was called Friday to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, where a deputy foreign minister Sedat Oney conveyed Turkey's "strong reaction" to the Senate's unanimous approval of the measure.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed around World War I, and many scholars see the mass loss of life as the 20th century's first genocide.

Turkey says the death toll has been inflated and those killed were victims of a civil war.

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