ATHENS – President of the Republic Prokopios Pavlopoulos sent on Sunday a message to Turkey and the European Union on the tragedy of refugees and migrants.

“We will not allow Turkey to humiliate people by ruthlessly writing the pages of a merciless tragedy. We will not allow Turkey to return to its blood-stained past of the early 20th century, which will constantly stigmatize it until it apologizes for it.”

He also made it clear that “for us, for the Greeks, it is precisely our Orthodox Faith and our Culture, Greek and European, that in our struggles to defend the troubled people, the refugee, the migrant, are forcing us to react to the brutal trade of human suffering – which it (Turkey) has caused – and defend basic human rights under international and European law.”

Addressing our European partners, he stressed that “the European Union must, based on European law, show its solidarity with Greece in practice, imposing, where it sees fit, the penalties imposed on those who fail to comply with their own obligations of Humanity and Solidarity.”