Responding to the provocative statements made by Turkish President Recep Erdogan, who had indirectly disputed the territorial integrity of Greece by referring to Thessaloniki and Thrace as tied to Turkey, the President of the Hellenic Republic, Prokopis Pavlopoulos stressed that the rhetoric he used undermined the Lausanne Treaty and the relations between the two countries. During the official ceremony of his proclamation as an honourary citizen of Edessa, in northern Greece, Pavlopoulos underlined that it was Greece who had supported the legal government of Erdogan when the failed coup was unfolding. “Greece is the door and window for Turkey to enter the EU”, he added. In his acceptance speech, Pavlopoulos called on Turkey to respect international laws and history. “It is a known fact that the Lausanne Treaty has definitively and irreversibly defined the borders between Greece and Turkey, and by extension Europe, as the European borders were identical to those of Greece within the EU framework.”, Pavlopulos stressed. The Greek President also sent a strong message to neighbouring FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), clarifying that Macedonia was and will remain Greek. He added that as long as FYROM raised irredentist claims against Greece, the door to the EU would be closed, as their stance violated European justice.