Stefanie Babst: I remember NATO Summit communiqués listing 100 or more paragraphs. In the run-up to a Summit, the NATO allies discussed and negotiated practically every aspect of global security and defence, arms control and proliferation challenges, climate security all the way to big-power relations with Russia and China.
Alas, the process leading to a written communique with substantive ‘flesh on the bones’ was often tenuous, controversial and time-consuming. But in the end, it was always worth the effort since, after some hard weeks of hefty negotiations, the allies were able to present consensual standpoints on what mattered to them strategically as well as joint decisions on their deterrence and defence posture, ongoing operations as well as vital policy issues such as NATO membership and partnerships.
These days are long gone. The Ankara Summit declaration will likely fit on a single page. That was already the case for the statement that the Allies issued at their Summit meeting in The Hague last year: no mentioning of a long-term strategy towards Russia and China; nothing about a strategic end-state for Ukraine, let alone how the Alliance seeks to tackle the plethora of regional and transnational threats in its neighbourhood or move NATO-EU relations on a new level.
So, what will the Ankara meeting be about? Primarily it will be about financial pledges. We all know that keeping U.S President Trump happy is NATO Secretary General Rutte’s prime concern. The ‘Trump trillion’ chart that he showed to Trump in the Oval Office at the end of June provided a taste of the Ankara Summit’s main theme: big numbers. Only because of Trump’s extraordinary leadership, Rutte claimed, NATO allies had now started to spend unprecedented amounts of money on their defence.
Is this a message that the U.S. President likes? Obviously. Trump loves big numbers. The bigger, the better. $500bn is one of his favourites. After all, his obsession with big numbers appears to be a good-enough incentive for him to travel to the Turkish capital. Why else would he want to spend two days with his European and Canadian ‘paper tiger’ – friends if they were not be willing to put big money on the table? Better still: all attributed to his grandiose leadership?
According to the Summit’s masterminds, announcing more large-scale financial pledges will soften Trump’s ill-tempered attitude towards Europeans and Canadians. Yet it cannot be excluded that the U.S President will eventually read the fine print of NATO defence expenditures: 17 of the 32 NATO allies have just reached the 2% spending mark or landed slightly above and will need years before they approach the 5% ceiling that they agreed in 2025. The noble exceptions include Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and some of the Nordic members. More importantly, regardless how impressively high the net spending figures are on paper, they do not translate into real war fighting capabilities and manpower.
Irrespective of whether Trump will notice the small printed defence numbers of the Allies; in Ankara, he will lament about the Europeans spending too little, too late on their militaries, buying not enough U.S weapons and technology and, more generally, he will complain about their lack of gratitude to him.
So apart from the Allies’ preparedness to make further big investments into their defence and improve their defence cooperation – which they have promised to improve in the past 20 or so years – can we expect any kind of major policy decision from Ankara? Barely: France, the UK, Germany, Italy and other NATO members will remain cautious as to make any firm commitment regarding providing security in the Strait of Hormuz. And how could they possibly since the U.S and Israel continue to exchange military strikes with the regime in Iran?
And Ukraine? In Ankara, the European NATO allies and Canada seek to announce another major financial support package for Ukraine. They want to pledge EUR 70bn, with the sum made up of EU loans and pledges already made in 2024. Whether NATO members can agree on an equally heavy billion-euro package for 2027 is currently still open. This would be a strong message of continuous support for Ukraine, said German Chancellor Merz. Putin should draw the right conclusions.
The Kremlin ruler has already done that. Despite all the financial injections and military aid from Europe, Putin is determined to continue his war of aggression against Ukraine. He can rely on his supporters in Beijing and Tehran, and of course on U.S. President Trump who seeks to normalize U.S. political and economic business with Russia. Just a few days ago, Washington removed four Turkish and four Indian companies from its sanctions list that supplied Moscow with critical dual-use technology. And while Putin’s shadow fleet continues to supply large quantities of oil and gas to India and China – physically in front of our eyes through the Baltic Sea – the NATO allies still talk negotiations with Russia, thus chasing a window for peace that does not exist.
Bilateral deal
The Ankara meeting will not only be a platform for a large-scale number bingo. It is also designed to allow two aged, authoritarian strongmen to sign a lucrative bilateral deal on the public stage. Both Erdoğan and Trump need positive news for their respective home fronts: Turkey’s economy is still flat and Erdoğan’s authoritarian ousting of his political rivals continues to prompt domestic protests, and Trump wants to send the message as the world’s cleverest deal-and peacemaker back home to his MAGA voters.
In essence, Erdoğan is prepared to allow U.S companies to make huge investments in Turkey’s profitable energy market, notably the gas and oil exploration in the Mediterranean as well as in Syria and northern Iraq, whereas Trump will likely pave the way for Turkey’s return to the F-35 fighter programme of which Ankara was excluded after it purchased Russian S-400 in 2019.
The playbook for the 30 European allies and Canada is thus curbed. They will collectively and individually vow to spend more money on their military capabilities, improve their defence cooperation and, most importantly, hail transatlantic unity. Sadly, their meeting in Ankara will certainly not go down in history books as a strategic landmark event.
Dr. Stefanie Babst is a senior associate fellow at the European Leadership Network. She served 23 years in NATO’s International Staff, including as NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General and Head of the Strategic Foresight Team of the NATO Secretary General and Chairman of the Military Committee.
July 2026