Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey was ready to "pay the price" for mass killings of Armenians that began in 1915 — if, and only if, an “impartial board of historians” agree the dying Ottoman Empire was truly guilty of the crime, the Washington Post reports.

“If the results actually reveal that we have committed a crime, if we have a price to pay, then as Turkey we would assess it and take the required steps,” Erdogan told state-run TRT channel.

“We are saying, ‘If you are sincere on this matter, then come, let’s leave this to historians, let historians study the issue, let’s open our archives,’” Erdogan continued. “We have opened our archive. We have revealed more than one million documents on this. If Armenia also has an archive, then they should open it too."

Erdogan's comments come a few months before the centenary of the Armenian Genocide to be commemorated on April 24.

Just before the 99th anniversary of the killings, he “expressed condolences” for the “inhumane incident”.

The Turkish president's latest comments are unlikely to placate his biggest critics, who would argue that the historical record on the Armenian killings has already been set, The Washington Post notes. Twenty-five countries currently call the 1915 killings Genocide, and many historians already use the term: In fact, the man who coined the word genocide, Raphael Lemkin, was thinking of the killings of Armenians in what is now Turkey when he created it, the publication reminds.

On Twitter, Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division, called Erdogan's comments "doublespeak."