Trump heads to Ankara for NATO summit on defense spending and Ukraine

Donald Trump will attend a NATO summit in Ankara at the Beştepe Presidential Compound on Tuesday and Wednesday, chaired by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. The gathering will review progress since the 2025 summit in The Hague and set a roadmap for NATO’s next steps, with defense investment, defense industry production, support for Ukraine and broader deterrence priorities on the table.

Trump and his team will push the 5% of GDP benchmark for defense. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker said the summit will “take stock” of allies’ progress. Poland, the Nordic countries and the Baltic countries are moving faster than others, while Germany is on track to reach the target in 2029. NATO’s summit materials put European allies and Canada at USD 139 billion in additional core defense investment in 2025, and some allies will reach the 5% target in 2026.

Trump will attend despite ongoing friction with NATO partners over Iran, Greenland and his repeated criticism of allies’ spending and burden-sharing. His brief trip will include bilateral meetings with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he will also meet Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa during the summit. Erdogan has said a bilateral meeting with Trump would “most likely” happen, and Trump has said he is attending “out of respect” for Erdogan.

The Ankara meetings come after a stretch of transatlantic strain marked by Trump’s threats to reconsider U.S. membership in NATO, announced U.S. troop withdrawals from Europe and an unstable ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

Türkiye is hosting a NATO summit for only the second time, after Istanbul in 2004. This year Ankara will host 32 NATO leaders plus officials from partner countries in the Gulf and Asia-Pacific region, while a NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum on Tuesday will bring officials and industry leaders together on production, investment and innovation. Trump will leave Washington Monday night and return to the United States on Wednesday evening.