Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday announced the conclusion of an extensive restoration project at a building in Thessaloniki, Greece, that is considered the birthplace of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – the founder of modern Turkey.

The long-time Turkish leader and dominant political figure in the neighboring country in the 21^st century spoke on the occasion of the 87th anniversary of Ataturk’s death, during an official state ceremony at his mausoleum in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

The building was donated by the municipality of Thessaloniki to the Republic of Turkey in the mid-1930s and was subsequently turned into a museum by that country. Today it is part of Turkey’s consulate complex in the northern Greece city, annually attracting tens of thousands of Turkish visitors every year.

Besides praising Ataturk, the pre-eminent political figure of modern Turkey, Erdogan also incorporated references ranging from the 1071 Battle of Mantzikert – which led to the incursion and settlement of Turkic populations, especially the Selcuk Turks, in Asia Minor – to the conquest of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) by the Ottomans in 1453 to the Gallipoli Campaign during WWI. Erdogan included the July 15, 2016, coup attempt against him in the “laundry list” of expressing gratitude to the country’s “martyrs”, as he said.

The renovation of the Thessaloniki building was undertaken by Turkey’s culture and tourism ministry and coordinated by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA).

Ataturk died on Nov. 10, 1938, at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul from cirrhosis.