Turkey rejects claim Lord Elgin had permission to take Parthenon marbles

Official says no sign of permit in Ottoman archives, in blow to British Museum, which defends legal right to statuary

Greece has won an unlikely ally in its campaign to retrieve the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum after Turkey publicly rejected the claim that Lord Elgin had received permission from Ottoman authorities to remove antiquities from the Acropolis.

In a move hailed by officials in Athens as a hugely important" admission, Zeynep Boz, the Turkish culture ministry's top anti-smuggling official, this week said there was no evidence to prove the peer had been given a permit to strip the fifth-century BC monument of the sculptures.