Hundreds of demonstrators in the Armenian capital ignored police calls to disperse on Wednesday, digging in for a new day of protests against electricity price hikes and police violence.

Braving sweltering heat in Yerevan, some 600 protesters -- mainly young people -- vowed to keep up the pressure on President Serzh Sarkisian's government until it reverses a decision to raise electricity tariffs for households.

Turkey said it has recalled its ambassador to Brazil for consultations after the country's senate passed legislation recognizing the massacres of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War I as genocide.

The Brazilian Senate adopted the resolution on June 2, joining more than 20 other states in officially recognizing the mass killings of Armenians from 1915 as genocide.

Armenia and Belarus are holding up agreement on a joint declaration at the EU-Eastern Partnership summit over references to Russia's annexation of Crimea last year, diplomatic sources said Thursday.

EU leaders are meeting in the Latvian capital Riga with their counterparts from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, aiming to cement ties with the former Soviet states but without closing the door on Russia.

Azerbaijan on Wednesday summoned the French ambassador to protest a visit by the leader of the breakaway Nagorny Karabakh region, the Caucasus republic's foreign ministry said.

"France's ambassador to Baku, Pascal Monnier, has been summoned to Azerbaijan's foreign ministry and handed a note of protest over the separatist leader's visit to France on May 17-19," Azerbaijan's foreign ministry spokesman, Hikmet Hajiyev, told AFP.

Overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey's top religious authority Diyanet said it has published thousands of copies of the Koran translated into Armenian for the first time, as it seeks to reach out to minority communities.

Yuksel Salman, director of Diyanet's religious publications office, denied the publication of the Muslim holy book in Armenian has any link to the 100th anniversary last month of mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey on Thursday recalled its envoy to Luxembourg to Ankara for consultations after the parliament in the EU member state recognized the mass killings of Armenians in World War I as genocide.

The recall of the envoy is the latest such move by Ankara after it withdrew its ambassadors to the Vatican and Austria over the controversy last month.

Opposition parties for the first time won parliamentary seats in the legislature of Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorny Karabakh in a vote denounced as illegitimate by Baku and the West, preliminary results showed on Monday.

Three pro-regime parties won most of the votes in Sunday's parliamentary elections in the separatist region but in a surprise development two opposition parties cleared the five-percent threshold needed to get into the 33-member legislature, officials said.

Azerbaijan's separatist region of Nagorny Karabakh went to the polls Sunday to elect a new parliament in a vote denounced as illegitimate by Baku and the West.

For over two decades, the Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute over the territory -- which no country recognizes as independent -- has been a major source of tension in the strategic South Caucasus region wedged between Iran, Russia and Turkey.

President Reuven Rivlin met Armenian community leaders Sunday on the centenary of the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians, the first time an Israeli head of state has marked the killings.

Israel does not recognize the slaughter of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman forces between 1915 and 1917 as "genocide."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday lashed out at the European Union and world leaders who have recognized the 1915 massacres of Armenians as genocide on the centenary of the events. 

Erdogan accused the leaders of France, Germany and Russia of "supporting claims based on Armenian lies" after they described the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide -- which Turkey strongly objects to.