President Donald Trump departed Monday evening for Ankara, Turkey, to attend the NATO summit scheduled for July 7–8, 2026 — the first visit by a U.S. president to Türkiye since 2015, according to NPR.

Trump's stated objective is straightforward: hold allies to the 5% of GDP defense spending target and extract concrete timelines for getting there. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker told reporters Trump expects member states to move toward that benchmark "with urgency." NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has signaled the same expectation, calling on allies to present credible plans at Ankara. The summit venue is the Beştepe Presidential Compound — Erdoğan's Külliye — and will also host the NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum on July 7, described by NATO as its premier high-level event on transatlantic defense production, investment, and innovation.

Defense Spending: The Central Test

The 5% GDP target has been Trump's signature demand since before his second term. At a pre-summit Oval Office meeting, Rutte displayed charts labeled "The Trump Trillion" to illustrate the increase in allied defense spending commitments since 2017. Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute characterized the Ankara summit as the "first report card" following the June 2025 Hague summit, where Trump closed proceedings alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The Hague gathering set the 5% target; Ankara is where compliance — or its absence — gets measured against a ten-year horizon.

A draft summit declaration obtained by Reuters commits leaders to an "ironclad" affirmation of collective defense under Article 5. The language matters: Trump spent much of his first term questioning whether Article 5 commitments were unconditional, and even ahead of this summit he criticized NATO members for limited support during the U.S.-Iran conflict. A Congressional Research Service report published July 2 catalogued the open questions heading into Ankara — spending trajectories, burden-sharing mechanics, and industrial base coordination among them.

Ukraine, Russia, and the Bilateral Slate

The Ukraine war — now in its fifth year — is the other load-bearing issue at Ankara. Trump spoke with both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 4, and he is scheduled to meet Zelenskyy in person on Wednesday on the summit sidelines. European leaders also came to Ankara looking to smooth over friction with Washington over Iran and Greenland, per Reuters — residue from a G7 in Evian-les-Bains in June where Zelenskyy attended on June 16 and Trump secured allied backing for an interim agreement to wind down the Iran conflict.

Beyond Zelenskyy, Trump's bilateral dance card is short by recent summit standards. He has one-on-one sessions planned with host President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa on the sidelines. No other bilaterals are on the schedule. The narrow list reflects both the compressed summit format and the degree to which Washington's current diplomatic bandwidth is concentrated on the Russia-Ukraine file, the post-Iran-deal architecture, and the defense spending enforcement push.

Context

Turkey formally proposed using the Ankara summit to "reset" ties with Trump back in April 2026, per Reuters, and Ankara has invested visibly in the hosting role — summitbillboards were up across the capital by July 1. For Erdoğan, the combination of hosting rights, a bilateral with Trump, and the presence of Gulf and Asia-Pacific partner nations alongside all 32 NATO allies positions Turkey as a hub rather than a peripheral member.

Secretary Rubio confirmed in early June that Trump would attend despite his documented frustrations with the alliance. Whether those frustrations translate into public pressure at the summit itself — or whether the "Trump Trillion" framing from Rutte's charts gives Trump a narrative of vindication to work with — will shape the tone of what comes out of Beştepe on July 8.