As it hosts NATO, Turkey eyes France's SAMP/T system, F-35 progress with Trump

ANKARA — Turkey is preparing to host Tuesday's NATO summit at a moment of heightened mutual dependence with the alliance and as France’s reported openness to a possible SAMP/T air defense system sale signals a thaw in defense ties.

The summit comes as regional wars and doubts over US security commitments are pushing Turkey and NATO members toward a more pragmatic defense relationship. Turkey’s geographic position, military weight and growing defense industry have become harder for Europe to ignore, while Ankara’s own air defense gaps have revived its need for allied cooperation. The result is a transactional thaw, including among European partners long wary of closer defense ties with Ankara.

Despite adopting a more cautious approach to defense cooperation with Turkey, Paris is now reportedly open to a possible SAMP/T sale after years of political opposition, Reuters reported Sunday, citing four sources.

Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler told the news agency last month that Ankara was evaluating both the US Patriot and SAMP/T systems and remained open to technology transfer and joint production. Al-Monitor reached out to Turkish and French authorities, but received no response as of this writing.

As Ankara seeks progress on both the SAMP/T file with its European partners and its bid to purchase F-35 fighter jets from the United States, the summit will offer Turkey a chance to translate its rising strategic value within NATO into deeper defense industry cooperation on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ankara becomes fortress

The two-day summit will bring leaders from NATO’s 32 member states to the Turkish capital in one of the largest diplomatic gatherings Ankara has hosted in years. US President Donald Trump is set to attend, along with other allied leaders.

Last month, the country opened a freshly modernized airport to receive visiting leaders and official delegations. 

Authorities prepared an expansive security operation ahead of the gathering. Roughly 70,000 personnel will be deployed in the capital, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency reported last week.

The Ankara governor’s office has imposed sweeping security and traffic restrictions across the capital, closing off roads leading to the presidential complex, where the summit will be held, as well as around the delegations' hotels and motorcade routes. 

Meetings, marches, press statements, rallies, tents and banners were also banned across the city from June 28 to July 10, and public events including concerts, festivals and other large gatherings have been canceled. 

Public employees in the capital were placed on administrative leave from July 6 to 12 to ease traffic and security pressure, though security, health, transportation, emergency and summit-related personnel will remain on duty.

Trump’s NATO blues 

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte described the Ankara summit as an implementation test, saying that allies will seek to show they are delivering on commitments made during last year’s summit. 

“The Ankara Summit will all be about implementation,” Rutte said on June 18 in Brussels, speaking alongside US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth after a NATO defense ministers’ meeting. 

The commitments refer largely to allies’ pledges to raise their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product by 2035, a long-standing demand by Trump, who has pressed NATO allies to shoulder more of the bloc’s defense costs since his first term in the White House from 2017 to 2021.

Trump’s return to the White House has revived lingering doubts over Washington’s commitment to NATO. The uncertainty grew beyond defense spending after the start of the joint US-Israel war against Iran in February, amid NATO allies’ reluctance to join the war. 

Trump said he was “let down” by European allies that did not back the US-led campaign against Tehran during his meeting with Rutte at the Oval Office on June 24. 

“We’re so loyal to them; we’re always fighting for them,” Trump said, referring to US forces stationed in Europe. “Give us a little kiss. We don’t want much. And they say, ‘No, we can’t do it.’”

US President Donald Trump greets Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a summit on Gaza in Sharm el-Sheikh on Oct. 13, 2025. (EVAN VUCCI/AFP via Getty Images)

Turkey’s moment

Trump's increasingly critical rhetoric toward NATO has strengthened Ankara’s hand as European allies now rely more heavily on Turkey.

Sitting next to Rutte last month, Trump said, "Except for the fact that it was being held in Turkey by President Erdogan, I don't think I would have gone to it.”

The close ties between Turkish and US leaders offer Ankara an opportunity to bridge the gap between European leaders and Trump, according to Fatih Ceylan, a former Turkish ambassador to NATO and security analyst at the Ankara Policy Center.

Turkey is the bloc’s second-largest standing military and sits on the alliance’s southeastern flank. “Turkey also has an advanced defense industry, and that can contribute to European security,” Ceylan told Al-Monitor.

Turkey’s military spending stood at roughly $30 billion in 2025, up 7.2% from 2024, making it the world’s 18th-largest military spender, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The country’s defense exports also rose by 122% in 2021-2025 compared with the previous five-year period, its data shows.

Beyond Trump’s frustrations with NATO, the war in Ukraine has also sharpened Turkey’s strategic value to the alliance. “Turkey’s role has grown across the board,” Ceylan told Al-Monitor. 

Turkey maintains open channels with both Kyiv and Moscow while remaining inside NATO. The country hosted early Russia-Ukraine talks after Moscow’s 2022 invasion and helped broker the now-defunct 2022 Black Sea grain initiative that allowed Ukrainian grain exports to pass.

Turkey’s shift toward NATO

Turkey’s renewed leverage comes despite years of tension with NATO allies over Ankara’s ties with Russia, democratic backsliding and disputes in the eastern Mediterranean with Greece, its NATO ally.

Yet the Ukraine and Iran wars have not only boosted Turkey’s standing within NATO; they have also underscored Ankara’s own reliance on the alliance.

NATO air and missile defense systems destroyed four ballistic missiles launched from Iranian territory and headed toward Turkish airspace in March. Iran denied firing any missiles toward Turkey, but Ankara maintained that the missiles had been launched from Iranian territory.

The missile attacks showed Turkey’s vulnerability to regional spillover and its continued reliance on NATO’s air-defense architecture.

“Turkey appears to have shifted its course somewhat more toward the West and is giving greater weight to NATO,” Ceylan said. 

In March, the Turkish Defense Ministry confirmed ongoing efforts to set up a NATO multinational corps headquarters in Turkey’s Mediterranean province of Adana under the alliance’s southeastern regional defense plan, a structure expected to strengthen deterrence across the Mediterranean, Black Sea, South Caucasus and North African regions.

Also in March, Ankara announced plans for a maritime command in Istanbul in a bid to take a role in Black Sea security planning in any prospective Ukraine settlement. 

As regional wars push Turkey’s air-defense and offensive capabilities back to the forefront, Ankara is also seeking a formula for the removal of US sanctions that stemmed from its 2017 purchase of Russian S-400 systems.

In 2019, those US sanctions ousted the country from the F-35 fighter jet program, blocking Ankara’s planned acquisition of the aircraft. During his June meeting with Rutte, Trump hinted at a possible breakthrough ahead of the summit. 

“I’m going to probably do something that’s going to make [Erdogan] very happy,” he said in response to a question about Turkey’s bid to acquire F-35s. The issue is expected to come up when Trump and Erdogan meet on the sidelines of the Ankara summit.

Trump is also expected to use the summit for high-profile bilateral diplomacy, with the White House confirming he will meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa as well.

Muted allies

Turkey’s strengthening standing within NATO has helped mute criticism of the country’s democratic backsliding.

Turkey’s main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), faces an unprecedented legal crackdown. Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a key rival of Erdogan, remains in jail along with more than a hundred other CHP officials on various charges of corruption that government critics as well as international groups say are a politically motivated bid to weaken the opposition. 

In May, a Turkish court ousted CHP chair Ozgur Ozel from the party’s leadership, reinstating former chair Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who lost almost all elections against Erdogan during his roughly 13 years of tenure. While the government argues that the country's courts are independent, the European Union has long criticized the erosion of judicial independence in Turkey, particularly after it switched to the executive presidential system under Erdogan in 2018. 

Authorities have also tightened restrictions ahead of the meeting. Turkish authorities detained more than 100 people during anti-NATO demonstrations on Sunday in addition to more than 200 in the lead-up to the summit. Human Rights Watch said at least 209 people were arrested in Ankara before the gathering, including activists and others detained in what it described as an effort to head off dissent.