This article is part of a series featuring Atlantic Council experts’ analysis and recommendations on the key challenges facing allies at the upcoming NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, and beyond.
WASHINGTON—Recent years have seen a whipsaw of NATO engagement with its neighbors to the south. After pressure from Italy and other allies on the Alliance’s southern flank, NATO agreed to the Southern Neighborhood Action Plan (SNAP) at the 2024 Washington summit. At the 2025 Hague summit, however, NATO adopted no significant new measures in this area.
The upcoming Ankara summit is the perfect occasion for NATO to deepen engagement with its southern neighborhood in a more consistent way going forward. Host nation Turkey is perhaps the NATO ally most affected by instability and insecurity in the southern neighborhood, and it could use its role to push for the Alliance to engage more with the South.
The Turkish government has served as a bridge between NATO and the South previously, including at the last summit Turkey hosted, in 2004. This gathering resulted in the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative with four new Gulf partners for NATO. Recent instability in NATO’s southern neighborhood should be concerning to all members of the Alliance, and spotlighting allies’ shared interest in the region would be consistent with the Turkish government’s agenda of promoting Alliance unity at the Ankara summit.
Why the southern neighborhood matters
The communiqué after NATO’s 2023 Vilnius summit defined its southern neighborhood as the Middle East, North Africa, and the Sahel region. The allies agreed on the neighborhood’s “security, demographic, economic, and political challenges” and that those challenges provided a fertile environment for terrorism and an opportunity for interference by strategic competitors (Russia and China) and resulted in human trafficking and irregular migration. A NATO expert group report on the southern neighborhood the following year concluded that “threats, challenges and opportunities in NATO’s southern neighborhoods matter to Allied security and to NATO partners.”
Look no further than the Iran war this year to see a vivid illustration of the importance of the region to NATO allies’ security. In March, NATO-designated air defense systems intercepted several ballistic missiles in Turkish airspace that Turkish officials claimed originated in Iran. One of the missiles caused an explosion near Incirlik Air Base. The same month, drones from Lebanon—believed to have been launched by Hezbollah—attacked a British air base on the island of Cyprus.
The action in Ankara
At the upcoming summit in Turkey, the Alliance can take four steps that will set it on a better path with respect to its southern neighborhood.
First, the Alliance should reinforce the logic of the SNAP by enhancing the security dialogue with regional partners. The SNAP saw the creation of a new NATO special representative for the southern neighborhood. Javier Colomina, appointed to serve in the new role, has engaged in extensive travel to listen to the Alliance’s partners in North Africa and the Middle East. In May 2025, Colomina brought together ninety participants from NATO allies and North African and Middle Eastern partners for the first-ever Southern Neighborhood Security Dialogue in Naples. Such a dialogue is consistent with cooperative security, one of NATO’s three core tasks as described in the 2022 Strategic Concept. In Ankara, NATO should commit to reinforcing the Southern Neighborhood Security Dialogue in the form of a foreign ministers–level summit. In so doing, NATO would signal to its partners how important the region is to the Alliance, and the gathering would help facilitate a high-level exchange of views on mutual security challenges.
Second, the Alliance should provide enhanced and integrated air-defense and counter-drone capabilities for allies on the southern flank. The previously discussed missile attacks on Turkey and the British base in Cyprus demonstrate the vulnerability of southern allies. The Alliance can use Operation Eastern Sentry, begun in response to Russian drone incursions along NATO’s eastern flank, as a model for how to bolster the deterrence and defense of vulnerable allies to drone and missile attacks. Moreover, as southern allies move toward meeting their commitment to spend 3.5 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, they can devote some of those resources toward air-defense and counter-drone measures, which will also help them justify that increased spending to their publics.
Third, the Alliance should underline its commitment to maritime security in the Mediterranean by extending the work of Operation Sea Guardian (OSG). Since 2016, Operation Sea Guardian has contributed to maritime situational awareness in the Mediterranean, supported maritime counterterrorism activities, and helped NATO partners build their maritime security capacity. The Iran war this year and the struggle over the Strait of Hormuz have clarified the importance of maritime chokepoints. In addition, there have been several incidents involving undersea cables in the Baltic Sea in recent years. OSG’s mandate includes the protection of critical infrastructure, but it is not currently one of its tasks. The North Atlantic Council should authorize OSG to adopt the protection of critical infrastructure—including chokepoints—as a core task.
Fourth, the Alliance should do more to address current and future terror threats from the southern neighborhood. The 2022 Strategic Concept labels terrorism “the most direct asymmetric threat to the security of our citizens.” Terror groups are active in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Sahel. NATO should expand on its successful training mission in Iraq. The Alliance could, for example, offer to provide a training mission to Syria, where it would contribute to the strengthening and training of Syrian security forces to assist them in fighting terrorism and providing stability in the country. Terrorist groups are growing in strength in the Sahel, but Sahelian governments are unlikely to agree to a NATO training mission at this time. As such, southern flank allies would be wise to prepare for a potential future counterterrorism intervention in the Sahel—even by developing their own equivalent to the Joint Expeditionary Force.
What this means for the United States
In past instances of NATO’s engagement with its southern neighborhood, the United States has either encouraged allies or stood aside. There are real questions about how the Trump administration would react to the proposals outlined here. The 2026 National Defense Strategy states “we will be clear with our European allies that their efforts and resources are best focused on Europe.” The document argues that given increasing US focus on the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere, European allies can make the greatest difference for transatlantic security in Europe.
There are reasons for optimism regarding the United States’ position on NATO’s engagement with its southern neighborhood, however. First, it would be fair to read the National Defense Strategy’s language as a reaction to European efforts to bolster security in the Indo-Pacific, which is a greater challenge for them geographically than engagement with the southern neighborhood. Second, the measures described above are relatively low-cost and mostly entail enhancements of activities NATO is already engaged in. Moreover, NATO’s efforts in the southern neighborhood could enhance allies’ security without taking away from European efforts to deter Russian aggression in the East.