ANKARA – Continuing his country’s relentless verbal assault, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that being a member of the European Union won’t help Greece if trouble brews between them.

He said that Greece should follow international laws that Turkey doesn’t recognize unless invoking to its advantage and that it would a mistake for Greece to try to “hide behind the EU,” which he said is biased against Turkey.

“They are not helping reach a solution to disputes,” between Greece and Turkey over the seas, he said of the bloc that Turkey has been trying to join since 2005.

Turkey has demanded that Greece remove troops from Aegean islands near Turkey’s coast and disputes the sovereignty of the seas, citing the United Nations Law of the Sea – that Turkey doesn’t accept either.

Turkey sent a letter to the UN earlier laying out its claims and reasons why Greece should not be allowed to have troops on islands and whose removal would leave them open to invasion as Turkey has warned it might do.

The UN wants no part of the feuds between them and Cavusoglu dismissed Greece’s response to the letter, saying it was “weak” and lacked “legal arguments,” said Turkey’s Anadolu Agency.

“We told them to not to put third parties between us. This was our agreement,” Cavusoglu said, citing Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ visit to the US where the Greek leader asked the Congress to block President Joe Biden’s plan to sell Turkey more F-16s and upgrade its Air Force.

That ticked off President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who said after that he would no longer talk to Mitsotakis whom he said “no longer exists” for him, breaking off communications except between the countries defense ministers.

Both countries are also in NATO, which is also staying out of it, and Turkey has undermined the defense alliance by buying S-400 missile defense systems from Russia, an ideological enemy, which could be used against Greece in a conflict.