Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo slammed Turkey during a virtual meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday, accusing Ankara of stoking tensions with fellow allies in the Mediterranean and of giving a gift to the Kremlin by purchasing a Russian-made anti-aircraft system.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlt avuolu fired back, accusing Pompeo of phoning European allies and urging them to gang up on Turkey, of siding blindly with Greece in regional conflicts, and of refusing to sell Ankara U.S.-made Patriot anti-aircraft weapons.

avuolu also accused the U.S. of backing Kurdish terrorist organizations in Syria, while Turkey fought the Islamic State, and insisted that the U.S. and France had worsened a conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh by backing Armenia in a war that Azerbaijan won with Turkish military support.

The sharp clash over videoconference, confirmed by multiple allied delegations, came as Pompeo was attending what was likely his last NATO foreign affairs ministerial on behalf of President Donald Trump a meeting that was intended to focus primarily on a new report about how NATO should adapt for the next decade. Some diplomats speculated that Pompeo was using his last meeting to inflame tensions that could make life difficult for the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden.

The new report, by an outside group of experts, was commissioned after French President Emmanuel Macron complained last year about conflicts among allies, including Turkey, saying the alliance was experiencing brain death.The report urges alliesto pledge themselves to a code of good conductand consider establishing a Centre of Excellence forDemocraticResilience dedicated to providing support to individual allies.

Several allies backed up Pompeo by speaking out against Turkey, including French Foreign MinisterJean-Yves Le Drian, who denounced Ankaras behavior and said cohesion within the alliance would be impossible to achieve if Turkey mimicked Russias aggressive interventionism.

By the end of the meeting, it was clear that Turkey was virtually isolated among the alliances 30 members. A renewed call by avuolu for NATO to take a role in Libyas civil war was rejected by the other allies, who have accused Turkey of exacerbating the conflict by sending weapons and mercenaries to support the Government of National Accord based in Tripoli.

After avuolu accused Pompeo and the U.S. of taking a maximalist position in favor of Greece regarding conflicts in the Eastern Mediterranean, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias hit back, saying if the Greek position is maximalist, so is international law.

Turkey has been at fierce odds with other allies for years, but has also proven the most militarily assertive NATO member, and particularly adept at achieving its objectives with hard power.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan interceded not just in Libya, but also in Syria, where he and Russian President Vladimir Putin largely fashioned the outcome that has kept Bashar al-Assad in power. Most dramatically, Turkey helped Azerbaijan achieve victory in its three-decade conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, with Baku reclaiming swaths of territory.

According to NATO diplomats, avuolu had a mixed message on Germany, praising Berlin for acting as an honest broker in trying to mediate the conflicts in the Mediterranean but also accusing the Germans of piracy over an incident in which German naval forces intercepted and boarded a Turkish ship suspected of trafficking weapons. The Germans were acting under an EU-led arms control mission.

At a news conference, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg sidestepped a question about the sharp exchange between Pompeo and avuolu, and instead noted that a NATO deconfliction mechanism had helped to ease the conflict between Athens and Ankara.

We have seen that the deconfliction mechanism has helped to reduce the risk of incidents and accidents, between the Greek and Turkish militaries, Stoltenberg said. But he added, it is not solving the underlying main problem.

That, he said, would depend on a German-led mediation effort, and the political will of Greece and Turkey.

Jacopo Barigazzi contributed reporting.

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