NATO's Ankara Summit: Allies Pledge $50 Billion in New Arms Deals as Trump Lambasts Europe Over Iran and Greenland
The 2026 NATO summit, held on July 7 and 8 at the Presidential Complex in Ankara and hosted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, concluded with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte declaring that the alliance had demonstrated its commitments from The Hague summit were being put into practice. The alliance announced more than $50 billion in new procurements covering deep precision strike, integrated air and missile defence, uncrewed systems, cutting-edge technologies, and intelligence capabilities, according to the NATO summit declaration. Average core defence expenditure across NATO Europe and Canada climbed to 2.53 percent of GDP in 2026, up from 2.3 percent in 2025, while the United States reported 3.17 percent. Only five of NATO's 32 members are projected to meet the alliance's goal of spending 3.5 percent of GDP on core defence this year, underlining the gap between pledges and delivery that continues to fuel intra-alliance tension.
Trump dominated the summit's media atmosphere, using the occasion to publicly berate European allies who he said had been unhelpful during the US-Israel war on Iran. Al Jazeera reported from Ankara that Trump had told European leaders he did not want their money — only their loyalty — and had added that he might not have attended the summit at all had it not been hosted by Erdogan. On the eve of the summit, Trump called Germany's defence spending ridiculous, prompting Chancellor Friedrich Merz to defend his country's budget in public, insisting it represented the greatest defence effort Germany had ever made. Separately, Fox News reported that Trump said NATO had failed two key tests — on Greenland and on Iran — at the summit, calling allies unwilling to help.
Behind the discord, however, significant institutional business was transacted. Rutte's closing press conference framed the summit as a demonstration of what he called NATO 3.0 — a rebalanced alliance in which European members and Canada assume greater responsibility for collective defence while working with the United States on a transatlantic warfighting cloud and powerful AI models. Zelenskyy held a relentless schedule of bilateral meetings in Ankara to rally support for Ukraine, which remains outside the alliance. Human Rights Watch reported that Turkey's crackdown ahead of the summit resulted in the detention of more than 200 individuals including activists, lawyers, and journalists, and that anti-NATO protests had taken place in Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir in the weeks prior.
The summit also became a venue for wider diplomatic activity, with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa holding a bilateral meeting with Trump in Ankara. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, one of two non-NATO heads of state present alongside Zelenskyy, used meetings on the sidelines to press Trump to revive diplomacy with North Korea, arguing that a phased approach prioritising a freeze over immediate denuclearisation was the more pragmatic path, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The US also announced a phased withdrawal of warplanes, destroyers, and submarines from NATO countries — a move that defence analysts told Al Jazeera had more impact on messaging than on actual military capability.
The Ankara summit's legacy will ultimately be contested. Rutte's institutional framing of unity and delivery sits uncomfortably alongside Trump's open contempt for much of the alliance's European membership, a contempt that has now been voiced on record at two consecutive summits. The announcement of record procurement deals and a 5 percent of GDP spending target for 2035 represents genuine momentum, but the structural question of whether a US president who regards NATO allies primarily as transactional partners can sustain the credibility of Article 5 collective defence guarantees remains unanswered. As the next summit moves to Albania, European capitals must decide whether to keep financing an alliance whose most powerful member treats their membership as a conditional privilege rather than a foundational commitment.