Tens of thousands of protesters marched through Hollywood on Friday to mark the centenary of the massacre of some 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces.

"We demand justice," read placards carried amid a sea of red, blue and orange Armenian flags along Sunset Boulevard, as demonstrators marched towards the Turkish consulate.

Turkey on Friday condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin for referring to genocide during commemorations of the 1915 mass killings of Armenians during World War I.

The foreign ministry said "we reject and condemn... (Putin's) characterization of 1915 events as genocide despite all our warnings and calls."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he would not call the mass murder of Armenians that began 100 years ago Friday a "genocide", one day after the German president used the controversial label.

Steinmeier said that adopting the term "genocide" to describe the slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces in 1915 could play into the hands of those who sought to minimize the Holocaust.

President Vladimir Putin on Friday called on French leader Francois Hollande to restore ties after a year of tensions over Ukraine as the two leaders met on the sidelines of genocide commemorations in Armenia.

"Unfortunately, our ties are not in the best shape, trade turnover is falling including with France which only causes regret," Putin told Hollande in the Armenian capital Yerevan.

Lebanon's Armenians held a protest on Friday to mark the 100th anniversary of when some 250 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up by Ottoman Turks as the first step of the genocide against them.

The protesters marched from the Armenian Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia to the town of Bourj Hammoud to demand the recognition of the genocide that was committed around the time of World War I.

The leaders of France and Russia on Friday joined ceremonies marking the centenary of the massacre of some 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces, a hugely emotional event that remains a diplomatic minefield.

During a commemoration at a hilltop memorial in the Armenian capital Yerevan, French President Francois Hollande urged modern day Turkey to end its refusal to recognize the massacre as genocide, saying he bowed in memory of the victims.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday described the World War I massacre of Armenians as "terrible carnage", but avoided the term genocide, as tempers flared ahead of the 100th anniversary of the bloodshed.

Friday marks a century since the start of the massacres waged by Ottoman forces, which Armenia says killed 1.5 million people between 1915 and 1917. 

Germany condemns the massacre a century ago of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces as a "genocide", President Joachim Gauck said Thursday, adding that Germany bore partial blame for the bloodletting.

Gauck's speech at an event commemorating the centenary marked the first time that Berlin has officially used the word "genocide" to describe the killings during World War I, and an unusually strong acknowledgment of the then German empire's role in them.

The Armenian Church on Thursday conferred sainthood on some 1.5 million Armenians massacred by Ottoman forces a century ago, as tensions raged over Turkey's refusal to recognize the killings as genocide.

The ceremony, which is believed to be the biggest canonization service in history, came ahead of commemorations expected to see millions of people including heads of state on Friday mark 100 years since the start of the killings.

Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi has urged the international community to recognize the Armenian genocide, expressing fears of further such atrocities against Christians in the world.

Al-Rahi, who is in Armenia to attend the ceremony to mark the centenary of the World War I killings by Ottoman Turks, was quoted by the National News Agency as saying on Thursday that “the international community and people with goodwill should recognize the genocide.”