Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made secret promise to his inner circle a decade ago, which was to disrupt the NATO alliance when he had a chance and consolidate his power, Nordic Monitor reports.

The promise was uncovered in 2011 by Turkish investigators who were probing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force network in Turkey.

“When I get a chance, I know what to do with NATO, Europe and Israel. I’m going to f*ck their mothers. NATO and the U.S. are as terrorist as Israel,” Erdoğan, then prime minister and running the government, told his loyalist lawmakers in a private meeting.

The outrageous remarks that were uttered by Erdoğan were delivered during a conversation about the proposed establishment of a new radar base in Malatya’s Kürecik district as part of NATO’s missile defense system, which works with missile interceptors in Romania and Poland.

Erdoğan was clearly not happy with the NATO plans laid out at the 2010 Lisbon leaders summit but at the time felt he had to go along with them in the face of pressure from the military and other government agencies that considered Iran a threat to Turkey’s national security. The Turkish government had long talks with the US, in particular over naming Iran as a threat to the alliance and the possible sharing of intelligence with Israel.

Erdoğan was particularly feeling the heat domestically from the Turkish military, which supported the NATO project, and he had not consolidated enough power in his hands to overcome this resistance.