Greece has found an unexpected ally in its decades-long efforts to return the Parthenon Marbles to Athens.

The British Museum has always claimed that it purchased the marbles legally from Lord Elgin, who spent more than a decade sawing and hacking them off the Parthenon, while Greece was under Ottoman occupation.

Elgin, a Scottish diplomat in Athens claimed he had permission from the ruling Sultan, a document the Ottomans called a “firman.”

But a statement from Zeynep Boz, the Turkish Ministry of Culture’s top anti-smuggling official, throws the British claim into a tailspin.

Boz said there was no evidence to prove that Elgin had permission to take the sculptures.

The statement came at a meeting of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in Case of Illicit Appropriation (ICPRCP) in Paris on May 29-31.

The Turkish official’s statement at such a high-level gathering of global leaders in antiquities anti-smuggling, challenges the chief argument put forward by the British Museum against the Parthenon Sculptures’ return to Greece– that they were legally obtained by the British government with the permission of the Ottoman authorities.

“We wholeheartedly look forward to celebrating the return of the Sculptures (to Greece), as we believe it will mark a change of behavior towards the protection of cultural property and be the strongest message given globally,” Boz added.

“Turkey is the country that would have the archived document pertaining to things that were sold legally at that time. Historians have for years searched the Ottoman archives and have not been able to find a ‘firman’ proving that the sale was legal, as it is being claimed,” Boz told the Associated Press.