ESSAY: Ankara muzzled, engines sold — Turkey plays its own tune in NATO

Turkish journalists shut out from the start

The NATO summit in Ankara, scheduled for July 7 and 8, 2026, is already tainted by a symbolically loaded controversy: on June 25, 2026, Turkish media report that dozens of Turkish journalists were denied press credentials to cover an event held in their own capital. This is no minor anecdote — it is a powerful political signal from a country that claims to host the world's largest military alliance.

For a democracy that prides itself on being the third largest military pillar of NATO, excluding the national press from its own summit is a troubling admission. Turkey is hosting the event for the second time in its history — the first was at the Istanbul summit in 2004 — and it is managing the event more like a state secret than a democratic forum.

The American sale that changes everything

Simultaneously, on June 24, 2026, Reuters reveals that the United States approves the sale of military jet engines to Turkey — a diplomatically weighty gesture just days before the summit. This move comes while tensions between Ankara and Washington over Turkey's purchase of the Russian S-400 air defence system officially remain unresolved after several years.

The timing is no coincidence. Selling military engines before a major summit sends a clear message: Turkey remains within the Western orbit, provided that orbit offers tangible compensation. This is geopolitical horse-trading conducted in broad daylight.

Turkey has always known how to play both sides — buying Russian, selling Turkish, receiving American. This is not duplicity; it is strategic survival in a neighbourhood that few NATO allies have to navigate on a daily basis.

Numbers that command respect

Turkey spends 36 billion USD on defence in 2025, making it the third largest army in NATO by personnel. This is not a peripheral member of the Alliance — it is a major military power controlling access to the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, the vital arteries between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. That geographic position is strategically irreplaceable.

For years, Ankara remained below the 2% of GDP threshold required by NATO, to Washington's repeated frustration. But in 2025–2026, the trajectory shifts: Turkey is now on course to exceed that threshold, which strengthens its negotiating position ahead of the Ankara summit. Its financial commitment can no longer be questioned.

Erdogan, host from a position of strength

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hosts this summit from a position of relative power. He managed to extract concessions from Stockholm over Sweden's NATO accession and now from Washington on military engines. His strategy of sustained pressure combined with selective cooperation appears to be paying dividends across every bilateral file.

It is a fragile but remarkably well-maintained balance. Turkey blocks, negotiates, concedes — then starts again. This cycle has become its trademark within the Alliance, and it will be fully on display in Ankara on July 7 and 8. Every partner has learned to anticipate this game without breaking the rules.

Erdogan is not a reliable ally in the traditional sense — but he is consistent in his unpredictability. NATO has learned to work with him, even if no one truly enjoys admitting it in official communiqués.I do not believe Turkey will give up the S-400 anytime soon. To do so would mean capitulating to Washington — and Erdogan does not make public capitulations. He will prefer a deliberately vague solution that allows everyone to save face at the next meeting.

Bayraktar and the Turkish drone revolution

The Bayraktar TB2 has become the global symbol of Turkey's military-industrial renaissance. Deployed extensively in Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Libya, this drone has proven that Turkey is no longer merely a technology importer — it is now an exporter of lethal capability capable of reshaping regional balances of power for the long term.

According to a Brookings analysis dated June 25, 2026, Turkey's defence industry is advancing decisively toward strategic autonomy with the high-altitude Akıncı drone, Roketsan missiles, and an increasingly independent supply chain. The stated objective is clear: no longer depend on either Washington or Moscow for critical capabilities.

The S-400 shadow as a sword of Damocles

Yet the shadow of the Russian S-400 persists. In 2019, Ankara decided to acquire this air defence system despite repeated American warnings, resulting in its exclusion from the F-35 programme. As of June 2026, this tension remains officially unresolved and weighs on every bilateral meeting between the two countries.

The sale of jet engines announced on June 24 could be a first step toward a tacit normalisation. But the fundamental question remains: will Turkey agree to set aside the S-400 in exchange for re-integration into American programmes? The signals on both sides remain deliberately ambiguous.

NATO is not a league of virtue — and it has never pretended to be. But in 2026, with Putin and his allies exploiting precisely this Western double standard, this ambiguity is becoming increasingly costly in terms of credibility.

Rutte and promises of billion-dollar deals

According to the Daily Sabah of June 25, 2026, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has announced that the Ankara summit will see the unveiling of billions in defence contracts. These massive announcements serve both to demonstrate the Alliance's vitality and to satisfy European and American industrial partners awaiting concrete orders on the defence market.

For Turkey, as host of the event, these defence contracts also represent a prime commercial showcase. Ankara wants to demonstrate that its defence industry can be a partner — not merely a beneficiary — of NATO market opportunities. The chance to sign industrial agreements is too valuable to pass up.

Trump and Rutte in Washington: Europe steps up

On June 25, 2026, a crucial meeting between the NATO Secretary General and President Donald Trump in Washington delivered a message of unity. According to the official NATO communiqué: "Europe is stepping up", with 90 billion USD in additional spending in 2025 by European and Canadian allies.

For Trump, whose rhetoric on "fair burden-sharing" is relentless, these figures are politically welcome. For Europeans, they are proof that their investment keeps the United States in the Alliance — at least until 2028. The American electoral calendar remains an inescapable variable in all strategic calculations.

Trump wanted cheques — and he is receiving them. But confusing billions in spending with a shared strategic vision would be a mistake. NATO 2026 functions more like a transaction than an alliance of shared values.

Dozens of journalists shut out without explanation

Let us return to the most troubling fact: the denial of press credentials to dozens of Turkish journalists. According to Turkish media and US News of June 25, 2026, these journalists received no official justification. Their probable offence? Having covered topics deemed sensitive by the Erdogan government over the years.

At a summit ostensibly dedicated to defending Western democratic values — with freedom of the press at the top of the list — this exclusion is a symbolic slap in the face. How can NATO proclaim it defends democracy against Putin while allowing its host to muzzle the journalists covering the event?

The Alliance's democratic double standard

This is not the first time NATO has looked the other way on press freedom violations in Turkey. The country consistently ranks among the world's top jailers of journalists. But geography, the size of its military, and Ankara's strategic position on the straits make this hypocrisy structurally unavoidable for its partners.

The Alliance has made its choice: power trumps principles. As long as Turkey maintains one of NATO's largest armies and controls access to the Black Sea, no one will rise to hold Erdogan accountable for press freedom. This cynical but real calculation deserves to be stated plainly.

This is NATO's fundamental paradox: defending freedom with allies who restrict it. I have no perfect answer to this — but I refuse to ignore the discomfort that it ought to cause us collectively.

An Alliance in deep transformation

The Ankara summit is unlike previous summits. It illustrates the structural transformation of NATO: from an alliance founded on shared values to an arrangement built on mutually beneficial interests. That may be more realistic — but it is clearly less inspiring for the populations the Alliance claims to represent.

Turkey embodies this transformation: it is not a liberal democracy in the Western sense, but it is an indispensable military partner. NATO has learned to live with this contradiction. The question is how far it can be pushed before undermining the Alliance's credibility in the eyes of the nations it claims to protect.

The geopolitical lesson of the moment

The sale of American military engines to Turkey days before the summit sends a message to the world: Washington needs Ankara, and it is prepared to reward that dependency. This is a form of acknowledged pragmatism — at the potential expense of the Alliance's political coherence.

For the Alliance's partner nations, this summit demonstrates that membership confers privileges. But it also demonstrates that privileges come at a price — and that price can sometimes take the form of complicit silence in the face of behaviour that contradicts the foundational values NATO publicly proclaims.

An irritated, divided, transactional NATO — that is a normal NATO. What would be abnormal is a silent, monolithic Alliance. Internal tensions are a sign of democratic life, not of imminent disintegration in the face of Putin.

Scenarios after the July 7–8 summit

Three scenarios emerge for the Turkey-NATO relationship after Ankara. In the first, optimistic scenario, the engine sale opens the door to gradual normalisation: Ankara agrees to stand down the S-400 operationally, and Washington opens the door to new joint military programmes, re-integrating Turkey into systems from which it had been excluded.

In the second, status-quo scenario, Turkey continues its double-game policy — pocketing Alliance benefits without conceding on the Russian file. In the third, friction scenario, a crisis — in the Aegean, Syria, or the Caucasus — forces a direct confrontation that neither Washington nor Brussels wants anywhere near the summit.

What Ukraine changed in the equation

The war in Ukraine has paradoxically strengthened Turkey's position within NATO. Turkey supplied Bayraktar TB2 drones to Ukraine — concrete military support — while maintaining economic relations with Russia through third-party countries. This calculated ambiguity allowed it to position itself as a potential mediator while remaining firmly within the Alliance.

For Zelensky, Turkey is not an ideal partner — but it is a useful one. Turkish drones saved Ukrainian lives on the battlefield. That concrete fact transcends Ankara's diplomatic ambiguities on sanctions or commercial relations with Moscow that embarrass the Alliance.

Erdogan's Turkey is an uncomfortable ally — but in this part of the world and this tense geopolitical context, comfortable allies are extremely rare. Ukraine knows that better than anyone since 2022.

What allies expect from Ankara

Beyond Turkey, the Ankara summit is a test of transatlantic cohesion for the Alliance as a whole. European allies want firm commitments from Washington on maintaining the military presence in Europe. Washington wants additional cheques and precise timetable commitments. And everyone wants Turkey not to create a diplomatic crisis on home turf.

Secretary General Rutte plays a crucial balancing role: meeting American demands on burden-sharing while maintaining the confidence of European allies who have already massively increased their spending. His ability to produce a final communiqué that satisfies all parties will be the true test of his political leadership within the organisation.

The role of democracy in the Alliance

The question of democracy within NATO is not new — the presence of the Greek colonels' junta in the 1970s or Salazar's Portugal at the Alliance's founding show it has always made compromises. But in 2026, as Putin justifies his war in Ukraine by accusing the West of democratic hypocrisy, these compromises cost more in terms of the international narrative.

The denial of press credentials to Turkish journalists is not merely a local press freedom violation — it is ammunition handed freely to Russian propaganda, which will not hesitate to deploy it to demonstrate Western hypocrisy to the Global South and to emerging illiberal democracies.

The essay ends here — on discomfort. The discomfort of an Alliance that must reconcile its own contradictions to remain relevant against adversaries who have no such scruples. That is the price of collective democracy.

An Alliance that moves forward despite itself

The Ankara summit will open on July 7, 2026 in an atmosphere of simmering tensions and commercial negotiations dressed up as strategic solidarity. Turkish journalists will be excluded. Billions in contracts will be signed. Erdogan will smile for the cameras. And NATO will move forward — despite its contradictions, despite its hypocrisies, despite its internal fractures that unsettle observers.

That may be the Alliance's secret strength: its capacity to survive its own paradoxes. In 2026, as Putin's Russia continues its war of aggression against Ukraine and China deepens its presence across every strategic theatre, NATO — imperfect, divided, transactional — remains the only available collective security framework for the West.

Turkey, mirror of the Alliance's ambiguities

Turkey is not NATO's problem — it is NATO's revealer. It exposes, with sometimes brutal clarity, the tensions between proclaimed values and real interests that run through the entire Alliance. The Ankara summit will, in that respect, be a faithful mirror — and no doubt an uncomfortable one — of what NATO actually is in 2026.

What is at stake in Ankara on July 7 and 8 is not merely another summit. It is a full-scale test of the Alliance's capacity to hold together despite everything — with Turkey as host, indispensable partner, and living contradiction of its own proclaimed democratic principles.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

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