Cyprus fears being drawn into a potential conflict between Greece and Turkey as rhetoric between the countries intensifies, Cypriot Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides said.

“We fear that any conflict in the Aegean Sea will affect us directly because we’ll be used as the weakest point in the whole story,” Kasoulides said Monday in an interview with Bloomberg TV. 

Ahead of next year's elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan intensified criticism of what Ankara claims is a growing Greek military build-up on the Aegean islands known as the Dodecanese, near the Turkish coast, as well as military support for Athens from the West.

The Turkish leader pledged to use whatever means necessary to protect Turkey's interests in its dispute with Greece, and the country's foreign ministry called the Greek ambassador to the carpet.

“Listening to Mr. Erdogan pretending that he is under threat from Greece I would qualify it as preposterous and ludicrous,” Kasoulides said. “It is he who threatens, he who has a revisionism policy.”