Türkiye's defense exports climbed 47% last year, to $10.9 billion. When NATO's leaders gather in Ankara on 7 and 8 July, that figure is part of why the host carries more weight than it did the last time.
This is the 36th NATO summit and only the second Türkiye has hosted. The first was in Istanbul in 2004, 22 years ago. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says holding it in Ankara reaffirms Türkiye's strategic importance and its role within the alliance.
The agenda is heavy. Allies are meant to show progress toward the target they set at The Hague in 2025: 5% of GDP on defense by 2035, up from the old 2% floor. They will weigh long-term military support for Ukraine. And they will argue over a phrase that has taken hold in alliance circles, "NATO 3.0."
The idea behind it is a redistribution of labor. European members would supply most of the conventional forces to defend the continent, while the United States keeps the nuclear umbrella and the capabilities Europe cannot yet match: satellites, long-range strike, heavy airlift, intelligence. Russia's war in Ukraine started the conversation. Trump's demand that Europe pay its own way sharpened it.
Türkiye sits in the middle of that redesign. It fields NATO's second-largest military, contributes close to 3,000 personnel to alliance missions, and spent 2.33% of GDP on defense in 2025. From 2028 it takes command of the Allied Reaction Force, one of NATO's fastest-moving formations.
The praise from allies has been pointed. Secretary-General Mark Rutte called Türkiye "one of the strongest armies in the alliance" with a "huge defense-industry advantage." Matthew Whitaker, the US ambassador to NATO, went further, telling Fox News that allies "need to be more like Türkiye," which he said is building "50 ships at a time" in its shipyards.
The industry is the argument. Turkish defense and aerospace exports rose 47.1% in the year to 31 May, reaching $10.9 billion, with NATO members buying $6.2 billion of that, more than half the total. A Defense Industry Forum runs alongside the summit at Turkish Aerospace's plant in Kahramankazan, and Baykar chairman Selçuk Bayraktar has already briefed NATO parliamentarians on the KIZILELMA unmanned fighter.
Ankara has a new building to open, too. The Ay-Yıldız (Crescent and Star) Joint Headquarters, whose foundation Erdoğan laid in 2021, will hold its first official event during the summit: a reception for visiting defense ministers, hosted by Defense Minister Yaşar Güler. The complex runs to about 890,000 square meters (9.6 million square feet) and is built for roughly 15,000 people, pulling the ministry, the General Staff and the three service commands under one roof.
The city is bracing for it. Ankara is deploying around 56,000 security personnel, roughly 49,000 police and 7,000 gendarmerie, with facial-recognition cameras and checkpoint sweeps. Officials say daily life will carry on, with only short closures for the leaders' motorcades.
Not every ally is comfortable. Spain is the only member formally exempted from the 5% goal, capped at 2.1%, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called the higher figure "counterproductive." Trump singled Spain out on 1 July, calling its government members of NATO "but not very good members." Germany's defense minister, Boris Pistorius, pushed back on the tone from Washington, telling Der Spiegel that "obedience is not NATO's concept" and that decisions are made by consensus.
Trump will attend, he says, "out of respect" for Erdoğan, and has hinted at a move on Türkiye's long-stalled request for F-35 jets and engines that would make Ankara "very happy."
The domestic argument runs alongside the diplomatic one. Writing in the Financial Times before the summit, CHP leader Özgür Özel argued that Erdoğan's turn as host projects a strong-leader image that hides "growing pressures on Turkish democracy," citing detentions of protesters, lawyers and journalists and the prosecution of Ekrem İmamoğlu. Allies "should not confuse repression with stability," he wrote, while adding that change must come from Türkiye's own people.
For Türkiye, the two days are a chance to be seen at the center of the alliance's redesign: hosting the leaders, opening the new headquarters, and selling the drones and ships that much of NATO now buys.