Trump Arrives in Ankara for NATO Summit Amidst Tensions

US President Donald Trump has arrived in Ankara for NATO’s annual summit, kicking the meeting off with a show of friendship for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and threats of US military withdrawal for the bloc’s European members.

Trump touched down in Türkiye on Tuesday, at a time of heightened acrimony between Washington and the Europeans. Trump has pushed his NATO allies to hike defense spending to 5% of GDP, a figure agreed upon at last year’s summit, but one increasingly difficult to meet as European economies stagnate.

The US president told reporters that he is “very disappointed with NATO” for not meeting this target and backing the US-Israeli war on Iran, and suggested that he could announce further drawdowns of US forces in Europe in response.

Trump said he only decided to travel to the summit out of respect for Erdogan, who he hailed as “a very strong leader.” Despite Erdogan’s condemnation of the war on Iran and the growing tensions between Türkiye and Israel, Trump announced that he would lift sanctions on Ankara over Erdogan’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system, and would consider reversing his ban on selling F-35 fighter jets to Türkiye – a move that would likely anger Israel.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has used the summit to ask for more weapons from his EU backers, this time anti-air systems capable of intercepting Russian ballistic missiles. One day earlier, the Russian military launched a combined missile and drone assault on Kiev, destroying weapons factories and other military infrastructure.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who infamously referred to Trump as “daddy” during last year’s meeting in The Hague, is using the Ankara summit as an opportunity to prove his value to Trump.

“President Trump fully expects that all allies will step up immediately and get on the path to 5% and do it with urgency,” he said on Monday, telling reporters that he plans to flatter the US president by bringing up “the Trump trillion” – his term for the trillion dollars that Canada and NATO’s European members have spent cumulatively on defense since Trump’s first term in office began in 2017.