NATO’s Ankara summit delivered the usual products — spending commitments, Ukraine pledges and bilateral deals. But the line that best explained the alliance came from Donald Trump, who said he might not have attended had Recep Tayyip Erdogan not been the host.
That comment turned a collective-security summit into a story about personal relationships. The leader of the alliance’s most powerful member was effectively saying that his participation depended on his regard for one president.
The formal headlines focused on F-35 discussions, burden-sharing and Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Those decisions matter. Yet the Erdogan remark revealed the operating system beneath them.
NATO increasingly depends on Trump’s judgments about individual leaders and whether he believes they have shown him loyalty. That makes diplomacy more transactional and less predictable. It also gives strategically placed leaders such as Erdogan unusual leverage.
Turkey remains indispensable to the alliance because of geography, military capacity and its position between Europe, Russia and the Middle East. At the same time, its democratic backsliding and independent dealings with Moscow complicate NATO’s claim to be a community of shared values.
Ankara therefore became more than another summit venue. It showed an alliance adapting to a U.S. president who treats attendance, protection and access as negotiable assets.
The summit may still produce durable policy. But its lasting significance is political: NATO’s cohesion now rests less securely on institutions and more heavily on the preferences of the man in the White House.
That is a fragile foundation for an alliance built to deter crises before they begin.
