ANKARA—As he boarded Air Force One to depart the NATO Summit on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump praised the “tremendous unity” of allies at the gathering. But the more widely held view over the past week here in the Turkish capital was that transatlantic unity remains vulnerable.
During his two days in Ankara, Trump renewed his criticism of European allies, ordering a halt to all trade with Spain over its refusal to meet the new defense spending target of 5 percent of its gross domestic product and its reluctance to support Washington’s operations against Iran. He also revived his demand for control of Greenland and declared the fragile ceasefire with Tehran over. One NATO member, however, appears to have emerged from the summit in a stronger position than before: Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decision to personally welcome Trump at Ankara airport, a protocol gesture rarely reserved for visiting leaders, underscored the renewed momentum in US–Turkish relations and set the tone for the summit.
Welcome to NATO 3.0
Turkey’s role within NATO has always been vital. Ankara joined the Alliance in 1952, in large part to stave off Soviet territorial demands. Since then, its geopolitical centrality has been self-evident, not least because of its proximity to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. During the early 1960s, for example, the United States deployed Jupiter missiles in Turkey to strengthen its deterrence against Moscow.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Turkey has in many ways returned to its original role within the Alliance: a strategically positioned NATO ally anchoring the Black Sea and helping contain Russian power from the south. A country of more than ninety million people, Turkey today has the second-largest standing military force in the Alliance, and it has emerged as a powerful regional actor with global ambitions, capable of influencing transatlantic dynamics.
This matters because NATO itself is changing. The summit in Ankara offered a glimpse of what has been called “NATO 3.0.” In this vision for the Alliance, the United States remains indispensable, but European allies assume greater responsibility for their own defense. It is an Alliance increasingly focused not only on deterrence, but also on production, procurement, and industrial resilience. And it is an Alliance whose security agenda now stretches from the Black Sea to the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. The numbers underline the shift. European allies and Canada raised their spending on core defense by nearly $140 billion in 2025. Moreover, the leaders’ declaration issued in Ankara commits the Alliance to expanding collective manufacturing capacity and eliminating defense trade barriers among its members. In this new environment, Turkey’s relevance is becoming harder to overlook.
The first reason is the Black Sea. Since February 2022, Ankara has pursued a careful balancing act between deterrence and dialogue. It has supplied Ukraine with drones and expanded defense-industrial cooperation with Kyiv, while also invoking the Montreux Convention to close the Turkish Straits to belligerent warships, limiting Russia’s ability to reinforce its Black Sea Fleet. At the same time, Turkey has refused to join Western sanctions, maintained economic and diplomatic channels with Moscow, and benefited from the space created by Russia’s partial isolation from the West. This dual posture has often frustrated allies, but it also gives Ankara leverage few NATO members possess. For Washington, this is precisely why Turkey matters: It can strengthen NATO’s position against Russia, but it can also soften the impact of Western pressure when doing so serves its own interests.
Significant signals
Turkey’s renewed relevance is also increasingly translating into industrial and technological influence. On the sidelines of the summit, NATO convened its Defence Industry Forum, which brought Alliance officials together with executives from major defense companies, including Turkey’s largest defense corporation. The deals announced at this forum are worth billions of dollars and range from counter-drone systems to integrated air and missile defense and precision strike capabilities. As Europe embarks on an unprecedented rearmament effort, Ankara is well positioned to become a central partner in NATO’s own defense-industrial ecosystem, even if the parallel European Union instruments funding much of the continent’s rearmament remain closed to Turkey by design.
Turkish firms have demonstrated their ability to deliver affordable, combat-tested systems at scale, from drones and armored vehicles to naval platforms and ammunition. At a time when many European countries are struggling with fragmented procurement and limited production capacity, Turkey’s comparative advantage is becoming more visible. Erdoğan used the summit to call for the removal of defense-industry restrictions among allies, arguing that European security cannot be built while excluding one of NATO’s largest military powers from procurement and industrial cooperation.
Perhaps the most significant sign of Turkey’s renewed strategic standing came from Washington. During the summit, Trump said that he was inclined to consider the sale of F-35 aircraft to Turkey, and he signaled that he would revisit sanctions imposed after Ankara’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defense system. Should this materialize, it would mark a remarkable political reversal after years in which the S-400 purchase symbolized the lowest point in US-Turkish defense relations. Yet the path forward remains far from straightforward. US congressional opposition remains significant, and the underlying issue that triggered Turkey’s expulsion from the F-35 program—the continued presence of the Russian-made S-400 system on Turkish soil—has yet to be resolved, despite recent reports suggesting that a deal could be reached soon.
Still, the signal itself is politically significant. It reflects a broader shift in Washington’s strategic calculus. Faced with a more assertive Russia, a rapidly rearming Europe, and growing instability across NATO’s southern neighborhood, the United States increasingly views Turkey less through the lens of past disputes and more as an indispensable military and industrial partner. Whether or not Ankara ultimately acquires the F-35 aircraft, the summit made clear that its strategic value within the Alliance has reached its highest point in years.
Regional matters
This same logic applies beyond Europe. In Syria, Ankara’s support for interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has worked in the direction of integrating the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces into the emerging national army, a goal broadly shared by Washington as it seeks to preserve counter–Islamic State capabilities while avoiding renewed conflict between Damascus, Ankara, and Kurdish-led forces. In Libya, Turkey has positioned itself as a key actor by engaging with rival centers of power and preserving influence across the country’s divided political landscape. Across the wider Middle East, Ankara is seeking to translate its new NATO leverage into regional influence.
The most delicate file is Israel. Turkey’s confrontational rhetoric toward the Israeli government has deepened bilateral tensions and is often aimed at a domestic audience, as when Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi told a ruling-party conference in June that Jerusalem would one day return to Turkish “sovereignty and dominion,” remarks Israel’s foreign ministry rejected. Yet Ankara’s ties to Hamas have also given it a channel that Washington has found useful, particularly in efforts to keep the group engaged in negotiations. The dualism is important. The same autonomous regional posture that complicates coordination with US allies can also make Turkey useful in crises where Western access is limited. For Washington, the challenge is not to expect Turkey to behave like a conventional European ally, but to understand when Ankara’s regional role can be leveraged and when it may complicate broader US objectives.
This is the central paradox of the Ankara summit. Turkey is becoming more important to NATO not because its disagreements with the West have disappeared, but because the current security environment has made them easier to compartmentalize. Despite Trump’s grievances throughout the gathering, all thirty-two allies still signed onto a declaration reaffirming their “ironclad” commitment to collective defense. Erdoğan hosted NATO leaders from a position of renewed confidence, Trump praised him publicly, and Turkey used the occasion to push for a renewed place in Western defense networks. But this was not a simple “return to the West.” A better way to read the summit is that Ankara is consolidating a more autonomous role from within NATO.
A middle power’s moment
That autonomy will continue to generate friction. Turkey’s refusal to join sanctions on Russia, its tensions with Israel, its disputes with Greece and Cyprus, and its domestic political trajectory will all shape the limits of reconciliation, not only with Washington but also with Brussels. The contrast between Erdoğa welcoming NATO leaders in Ankara and the mounting legal pressure on the opposition Republican People’s Party captured this tension clearly. As the summit opened, former Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu continued to defend himself in court on corruption charges. The party itself has spent the past two months in crisis: an appeals court annulled its 2023 leadership congress in May, removing chairman Özgür Özel and reinstating his predecessor Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Democratic backsliding may not prevent strategic cooperation, but it will complicate its depth, especially in Washington, where Congress remains central to arms sales, sanctions relief, and high-end defense cooperation.