What Trump and Europe Wanted From the Summit in Ankara
The 36th NATO summit took place July 7 and 8 in Ankara, and the location itself tells the real story.
The alliance did not gather in Brussels or Washington. It came to Erdogan’s own presidential palace, where Trump was welcomed with cannons, a cavalry on horseback, and jets painting the sky in red, white and blue smoke.
It was the first visit by a sitting American president to Turkey since Obama in 2015.
The preparation was just as revealing: EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas traveled to Ankara on June 29 and 30, a full week before the summit, bringing along the European commissioners for enlargement and migration.
She called Turkey “a key partner on security, migration, and energy.”
Here is the uncomfortable truth behind all this courtship: everyone in the room knows Turkey is not a reliable partner.
But the West has decided it would rather have an unreliable partner inside the tent than watch Turkey settle firmly on the side of Russia and China.
What Erdogan wanted: respect as a great power
Erdogan’s strategy for years has been to depend on nobody: not Washington, not Brussels, not Moscow, not Beijing.
He balances all four and collects leverage from each.
At the summit in Ankara, he presented Turkey as NATO’s indispensable bridge between Europe, the Black Sea, the Middle East and the Caucasus.
He urged NATO members to remove restrictions on defense cooperation with Turkey, announced plans to reach the alliance’s 5 percent of GDP defense spending target by 2030, and promoted his domestic “Steel Dome” missile defense project.
Hosting the entire alliance in his own palace was itself the prize: the image of a leader the whole Western world must come to visit.
What Trump wanted: Turkey away from Russia and China
Washington’s goal is simple to state: keep Turkey firmly inside NATO, away from Moscow, economically tied to the West, and not drifting toward Beijing.
Trump’s method is personal diplomacy with difficult men, the same approach he has used with Putin, Kim and Xi.
Sitting next to Erdogan, President Trump (@realDonaldTrump) announced he would lift the sanctions imposed in 2020 over Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system: “We don’t want to sanction friends.”
He praised Turkey as more loyal in the Iran war than allies he expected loyalty from, and said the F-35 sale is a decision still to be made.
To be precise: Trump did not approve the sale. He opened the door to it.
A law passed by Congress still prohibits selling the F-35 to Turkey as long as Ankara keeps its Russian S-400 systems.
What Europe wanted: energy, migration and a shield
Europe’s sudden warmth toward Ankara is not friendship. It is need.
Turkey hosts roughly 3 million Syrian refugees, the largest refugee population in the world, and Erdogan can open the migration floodgates toward Europe whenever it suits him.
He has done it before. In 2015 and 2016, hundreds of thousands of migrants crossed from Turkey into Greece and the Balkans, a wave that shook European politics for years and forced Brussels into a 2016 deal with Ankara just to slow it down.
Nobody in Europe has forgotten that leverage still sits in Erdogan’s hands.
Europe is also desperate to escape Russian energy, and the alternative supply routes, Caspian gas through the TANAP pipeline, Azerbaijani oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan line, Eastern Mediterranean gas fields, nearly all run through Turkish territory or its territorial waters. Whoever controls Turkey controls how fast Europe can cut its remaining ties to Moscow’s gas.
Add the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, which control Russia’s naval access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and Kallas’s own description of Turkey as the second biggest army in NATO, with a defense industry she called “very strong.”
Turkey also participates in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, welcomes Chinese investment in its infrastructure, and has kept its own channels open to Moscow even while selling combat drones to Ukraine, proof that Erdogan negotiates with everyone and commits to no one. That balancing act only sharpens Europe’s anxiety.
Brussels is not courting a friend. It is paying tribute to a gatekeeper.
Other developments from the summit in Ankara
The summit produced more than just the Turkey headline.
NATO staged what it called a “big reveal” of new military projects: large procurement programs, expanded drone investments, and new surveillance and air refueling capabilities, all designed to show Trump that Europe is finally taking its own defense seriously.
Notably, Secretary General Rutte had promised enormous new contracts, but no actual figures were announced, and some of the projects displayed had been agreed long ago.
The alliance’s aging early warning radar planes are about 50 years old, a reminder of how far Europe still has to go.
On the sidelines, Trump met Ukrainian President Zelensky, who made a fresh appeal for NATO membership, and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, as Washington and Ankara align their approaches to post-Assad Syria.
Trump also declared that the Iran MOU is “over” after Tehran’s latest attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, a story we covered separately this week.
And in pure Trump style, he renewed his demand that the United States should acquire Greenland.
The Danish territory remains strategically valuable for Arctic security and rare earth minerals. Whether serious proposal or negotiating theater, it reminded everyone that this president never limits himself to the official agenda.
Why Trump should not sell the F-35 to Turkey
Now our opinion, built on facts.
First, Israel’s case. Prime Minister Netanyahu (@netanyahu) said it plainly on Fox News: Erdogan “calls openly for the annihilation of Israel.”
This is the same Erdogan who called Israel a terrorist state and compared Netanyahu to Hitler before the UN General Assembly in 2024.
Netanyahu warned that the sale would destroy the balance of power in the Middle East, a balance guaranteed by Israeli air superiority.
The dispute is already damaging allies: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) canceled his planned visit to Israel and his meeting with Netanyahu, which would have been his first as Pentagon chief, amid the tension over the sale.
Meanwhile Erdogan is already pocketing the concession: at the joint press conference he claimed Turkey has “already received a commitment” on five aircraft, along with Trump’s personal assurance.
Second, Greece. Prime Minister Mitsotakis, leader of a fellow NATO member that Erdogan regularly pressures, noted that “significant legal obstacles” still block any such sale.
Third, the technical danger: Turkey still operates Russian S-400 radars, and Congress concluded years ago that those systems could collect data on the F-35’s stealth secrets, which is exactly why Turkey was expelled from the program in 2019.
Fourth, the law itself: lifting sanctions is within Trump’s reach, but the F-35 prohibition is written into legislation, and Congress is unlikely to bend.
Trump has managed this summit in Ankara skillfully, and pulling Turkey away from Moscow is a worthy goal. But there is a difference between courting an unreliable partner and arming one.
America’s most advanced fighter should never be handed to a man who dreams out loud of Israel’s destruction.
Keep your friends close, but never hand your sword to a man who praises your enemies. 🇺🇸 ✈️ #NATO #Turkey #F35
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