Ankara Rolls Out Red Carpet As Trump Joins Tense NATO Summit
United States President Donald Trump touched down in Ankara on Tuesday for a NATO summit shadowed by his open frustration with European allies, as leaders across the alliance moved to placate him with fresh pledges and arms contracts worth billions of dollars.
According to an AFP correspondent, the US leader landed at 1:51 pm local time (1051 GMT) aboard his new Qatari-gifted Air Force One aircraft, and was received on the tarmac by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan alongside a presidential guard, some dressed in blue and others in red. On his first official visit to the Turkish capital, Trump was scheduled to hold talks with Erdogan at the presidential palace before joining an official leaders’ dinner ahead of the summit’s main session on Wednesday.
The two-day gathering, held at the Beştepe Presidential Compound and chaired by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, brings together heads of state and government from all 32 member states. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung are attending as non-alliance guests, with Zelenskyy expected to press Trump on Wednesday for additional Patriot air defence systems as Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities intensify.
The summit’s central thread is money. A year ago, at The Hague, members agreed to lift security-related spending to five per cent of GDP by 2035, comprising 3.5 per cent on core military needs and 1.5 per cent on wider security. Rutte has framed the Ankara meeting as the moment the alliance shifts from promises to delivery, insisting European countries are “delivering” by expanding budgets and taking on greater responsibility for their own defence. Ahead of the summit, he noted that European allies and Canada had collectively spent an additional 1.2 trillion dollars on defence over the past decade.
The tone, however, remains sharp. On the eve of the gathering, Trump described Germany’s defence spending as “ridiculous”, a characterisation Chancellor Friedrich Merz rejected, calling his country’s budget “the greatest effort we have ever made to strengthen our defence capabilities.” The friction traces to Trump’s anger over what he viewed as insufficient European support during the recent US and Israeli military campaign against Iran. When European nations declined to join that effort, Trump said he wanted not their money but their “loyalty”, and suggested he might have skipped the summit altogether had it not been hosted by Erdogan, whom he counts as a close friend.
Washington has moved beyond rhetoric. The administration has announced a phased withdrawal of warplanes, destroyers and submarines from NATO countries, and two senior US officials indicated on Sunday that an ongoing review of American force posture in Europe “very well may lead” to further changes. The signals have unsettled several capitals already wary of US reliability, particularly after Trump’s public interest in acquiring Greenland, a self-governing part of NATO founding member Denmark.
For Erdogan, the summit is an opportunity to underscore Turkey’s centrality within the alliance and to press Ankara’s case for access to defence procurement as European military spending climbs. Turkey, now one of NATO’s largest arms exporters, is also seeking entry into the US F-35 fighter jet programme, a move currently blocked by its possession of Russian-made air defence systems. Trump has hinted he may arrive with what he called a “big gift bag” for his host, saying, “I’m probably going to do something that’s going to make him very happy.”
Beyond spending and Ukraine, Trump is expected to hold a sidelines meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa. He is due to close his brief visit with a news conference on Wednesday before returning to Washington.