MADRID – NATO leaders at a Madrid meeting couldn’t convince a stubborn Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to talk to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who’s been getting the silent treatment from him.

Erdogan has stopped talking to Mitsotakis and cut off most communications with Greece – their defense ministers spoke – irked that the Greek leader in an address to the US Congress urged lawmakers to reject President Joe Biden’s plan to sell Turkey more F-16s and upgrade its Air Force.

At the meeting, Erdogan wouldn’t meet or speak with the Greek leader who later said only that he would keep trying diplomacy with the volatile Turkish leader who pulled his threat to veto the entry hopes of Finland and Sweden to NATO.

That led to Biden reiterating his push to sell Turkey more fighter jets that could be used against Greece in a conflict although the US government insisted it was a coincidence and had nothing to do with Erdogan not standing in the way of Finland and Sweden joining NATO.

Erdogan refused a proposal to sit down with the Greek premier in a bid to de-escalate heightened tensions between the two neighbors, because “Athens continues to militarize Aegean islands,” his state-run news agency said.

Flying back from Madrid, Erdogan repeated he wants nothing to do with Mitsotakis and said that,“As long as he doesn’t pull himself together, it is not possible for us to meet,” according to Reuters.