Türkiye's turn as NATO's host ended on Wednesday, and Erdoğan closed it with a thank-you note and a tally.
The 36th NATO summit, the second Türkiye has hosted after İstanbul in 2004, brought the leaders of all 32 members to the Presidential Complex in Ankara, along with nearly 100 ministers and, by the president's count, more than 2,500 journalists, a record turnout by his account. In a statement on X, Erdoğan said the summit had "concluded successfully" and thanked the leaders, the organizers, the security and medical teams, and the residents of Ankara for their patience with two days of shutdowns.
Behind the housekeeping was a real ledger. The Ankara Summit Declaration reaffirmed the Article 5 guarantee, named Russia a long-term threat, and committed the alliance to more than $50 billion in new joint procurements and €70 billion ($80 billion) in military support to Ukraine this year. For the host, the harder currency was closer to home.
Türkiye came away with the clearest signal in years on the F-35. Standing beside Erdoğan, Trump said he would lift the CAATSA sanctions and "certainly consider" returning Türkiye to the program it was thrown out of in 2019, though no date was attached. Its defense industry left with contracts: a central role in a new NATO satellite constellation, and deals worth hundreds of millions for Aselsan. And on the sidelines came a win that had nothing to do with the alliance: after meeting Syria's president in Ankara, Trump moved to strike Syria from the US terrorism list, a step Ankara had pushed for.
The foreign press read it as a home victory, and said so. The New York Times tied Türkiye's rising value to the wars in Ukraine and Iran and to Trump's return, and Politico called Erdoğan the summit's "one clear winner." Trump supplied the line the Turkish papers wanted, saying he had come to Ankara "for Erdoğan" and that relations were "probably better than ever," while aiming sharper words at Berlin, Paris and London.
Not everything went to plan, and the sharpest reminder came from outside the hall. As the leaders met, the US-Iran ceasefire that Türkiye had helped shepherd collapsed into open strikes, and Trump used his time at the summit to scold allies who would not back Washington against Tehran. The host spent the week presenting Türkiye as the alliance's indispensable southeastern anchor, and the week's other headline was a war reigniting on exactly that flank.
The F-35 question, too, is still only a promise. Türkiye paid into the program and has neither the jets nor a refund, and "certainly consider" carries no calendar. Ankara has heard encouraging language from Washington before.
Measured against where it started, though, the host got most of what it came for: the declaration it wanted, the sanctions signal it had chased for six years, contracts for its factories, and two days of the world's cameras trained on Ankara. Erdoğan thanked the city for lending them the backdrop.