NATO’s biggest names are packing their bags for Turkey. Heads of state and government from all 32 member countries, including U.S. President Donald Trump, are expected in Ankara on July 7 and 8 for the alliance’s 36th summit, and this one arrives with more drama simmering underneath than most.
It is only the second time Turkey has hosted a NATO summit, following Istanbul back in 2004, and it comes at a moment when the relationship between Washington and its European allies has been tested by everything from the war in Iran to Trump’s musings about Greenland.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will host the gathering at the Beştepe Presidential Complex, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to attend as an invited guest, joining Erdogan for a dinner while Trump holds separate bilateral talks with the Turkish leader.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who announced the location and dates back in August 2025, has been steering the diplomatic ship in the months leading up to the summit, working hard to keep Trump engaged with an alliance he has criticized more than once as he makes his way back into the Oval Office.
Rutte’s Pitch: Turning Dollars Into Deterrence
Rutte has made his priorities for Ankara loud and clear in the weeks leading up to the summit. Speaking in Berlin, he said the meeting would focus on turning additional spending into combat-ready capabilities and significantly scaling up the defense industry.
He added that NATO would always remain a transatlantic alliance but needed to rebalance for the better, with European allies and Canada working closely with the United States to take on greater responsibility for conventional defense in Europe.
That rebalancing act has actual numbers behind it. Rutte said last month that NATO’s European members and Canada spent 90 billion dollars more on defense in 2025 than the previous year, pushing the total past 570 billion dollars.
That builds on the pledge made at last year’s summit in The Hague, where allies agreed to hike core defense spending to three and a half percent of GDP by 2035, plus another one and a half percent on broader defense-related investment like cybersecurity.
According to Reuters, which reviewed the draft summit declaration ahead of the gathering, leaders are set to affirm an “ironclad commitment” to collective defense under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty and pledge seventy billion euros in military assistance to Ukraine for 2026, with at least equivalent support planned for 2027.
The draft text is blunt about who NATO sees as the long-term problem. It describes Russia as posing “a long-term threat” to Euro-Atlantic security and stability while crediting European members and Canada for delivering on last year’s spending commitments.
It also touches on the Middle East, stating that Iran must never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon and calling on Tehran to respect freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.
That’s a nod to a tension that has quietly followed the alliance into Ankara: several NATO members restricted the use of their bases and airspace during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran earlier this year, and Trump has not let it go easily.
The Trump Factor and Why Everyone’s Walking on Eggshells
If there’s one person NATO officials are quietly strategizing around, it’s Trump. He has been openly critical of the alliance in recent months, at one point posting on Truth Social that the United States was spending money to protect NATO members “without getting any benefit from so doing.”
European officials know that the souring mood could resurface in Ankara, especially given how the war in Iran has strained his personal relationships with leaders such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The strategy for keeping him on side is not exactly subtle. A NATO diplomat, speaking anonymously, described the whole gathering as something of a showcase for Trump’s own leverage, saying it is “meant to be a demonstration to Trump of what a success he has had, and where everyone thanks him for pushing them.”
Diplomats and officials have reportedly asked countries to hold off announcing major defense deals early so there’s a bigger splash when Trump is actually in the room.
NATO is also keeping the whole affair brief, with Trump flying in for dinner on July 7 before a single formal session the next day, a structure meant to limit the time available for something to go sideways.
Not everyone is convinced the summit needs to be a triumph to count as a win. Peter Bator, Slovakia’s former ambassador to NATO, put it plainly to AFP, saying that for a successful summit, all that’s really needed is for Trump not to go against NATO, criticize it, or undermine its role.
Ian Lesser of the German Marshall Fund think tank offered a similarly cautious read, noting that the outcome will likely hinge on where things stand with Iran at the time, or whether there’s leftover bad blood from Trump feeling he wasn’t helped during the war.
A European diplomat summed up the mood of the alliance heading into Turkey with a line that’s been making the rounds: the alliance is alive and kicking, but a bit bruised.
Beyond the Headlines: What Ankara Is Really Testing
Strip away the theatrics around Trump, and the summit is really about whether NATO can prove its money is buying something real.
David Cattler, a former NATO Assistant Secretary General, framed the stakes during a June briefing hosted by the Center for European Policy Analysis, saying the question for Ankara isn’t whether NATO remains the world’s strongest alliance, since it obviously does, but whether allies can turn consensus, investment, and innovation into operational capability at the pace demanded by strategic competition.
That is a considerably higher bar than simply hitting a spending percentage on paper, and it’s the argument NATO officials keep returning to as they try to shift the conversation away from raw GDP figures.
Turkey, for its part, is angling to be seen as more than a gracious host. Ankara is expected to push for a deeper Istanbul Cooperation Initiative connecting NATO with Gulf partners, while highlighting its own growing defense industry, with companies like Baykar, TUSAŞ, and Roketsan increasingly woven into the alliance’s broader industrial and technological plans.
The city has also seen its share of pre-summit tension, including a heavy security presence and reported detentions in the run-up to the event, a reminder that even a summit built around alliance unity plays out against the backdrop of Turkey’s own complicated politics.
By the time the last motorcade leaves Beştepe, the alliance will be judged less by the language of its final communiqué and more by whether Trump leaves Ankara feeling like the win he was promised, and whether Europe can convincingly claim it is finally carrying more of its own weight.
Rutte has staked much of his credibility on making both things true at once. Whether he pulls it off may say as much about NATO’s next decade as anything written into the summit declaration itself.
