When NATO's leaders meet in Ankara next week, the agenda reaches past the alliance's usual arguments over spending and into Türkiye's own neighborhood: the Middle East, and the fragile peace between the United States and Iran.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking in Berlin alongside NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, said the summit would take up the future of the Middle East and the diplomacy aimed at a lasting US-Iran settlement, alongside the alliance's standing files, its own future, transatlantic cooperation and support for Ukraine. The shared goal, he said, is an end to Iran's nuclear program and the permanent opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
The backdrop is a war that rattled the region and the world's oil markets earlier this year. In June, the United States and Iran reached a memorandum of understanding, a 14-point framework that put a 60-day ceasefire in place and set out to reopen Hormuz, with a plan for a reconstruction fund of at least $300 billion for Iran. The fighting has stopped, and negotiators have been meeting in Doha to turn that framework into a full agreement.
Merz signaled that Germany would help pay for the rebuilding, once the guns are quiet for good. Berlin's interest is partly commercial: he was blunt that Germany wants the region's energy infrastructure restored to keep supply flowing to Europe. First the fighting has to stop, he said; after that, everything is open for discussion.
For the host, the file is close to home. Türkiye shares a border with Iran, sits astride the pipelines and shipping lanes that carry the region's energy, and took the price shock when traffic through Hormuz was choked off. A summit that lands the Middle East on Ankara's table puts Türkiye where it likes to be, at the hinge between the alliance and the region.
None of this displaces the summit's main business. NATO's leaders, Donald Trump among them, still gather on 7 and 8 July to weigh the alliance's future and a US drawdown from Europe. But the agenda arriving in Ankara is wider than that, and much of the added weight sits on Türkiye's doorstep.
The alliance is coming to the edge of the Middle East to talk about the Middle East. Its host has been there all along.