Turkey’s Foreign Ministry has reacted angrily to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s labeling of the mass killings of more than a million Ottoman Armenians in 1915 as genocide.

In a terse statement on Wednesday, the ministry said Netanyahu’s remarks were “an attempt to exploit painful events of the past for political ends.” The statement continued, “Netanyahu, who is being prosecuted for his role in the genocide against the Palestinian people, is trying to cover up his own crimes and those of his government.”

Netanyahu made the remarks on Tuesday to conservative American businessman and podcaster Patrick Bet-David. When asked why Israel had not formally recognized the 1915 killings as genocide, Netanyahu responded, “I think we have. I think the Knesset passed a resolution to that effect.” When reminded that it hasn’t, Netanyahu went on, “I just did, here you go,” making him the first Israeli premier to use the term for the historical tragedy. 

Turkey denies that the actions of its Ottoman predecessors constituted a genocide. An army of lobbyists and academics have argued that the Armenians had perished as a result of starvation and disease as they were being forcibly marched toward the Syrian desert as the empire was collapsing at the end of the First World War.