Pavlopoulos hits out at Erdogan over border talk
President Prokopis Pavlopoulos Tuesday said recent comments by his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan are “undermining” the Treaty of Lausanne, which delineated the borders between the two countries, as well as bilateral relations between Greece and Turkey.
Speaking in Edessa during a ceremony naming him an honorary citizen of the northern Greek town, Pavlopoulos said, “The rhetoric of Turkish President Erdogan, in any perspective, even the most benevolent, unfortunately directly or indirectly undermines the Treaty of Lausanne, not to mention Greek-Turkish relations and relations between the European Union and Turkey.”
He added that the treaty delineated not only Greece’s borders with Turkey but, by extension, the EU’s borders with Turkey.
Erdogan caused displeasure in Athens in September by saying that Ankara gave away Aegean islands to Greece under the Treaty of Lausanne, the 1923 pact that defined the borders of modern Turkey following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
