# REPORT: The Ankara Summit and the 5%-of-GDP Milestone in Three Acts

> On July 7 and 8, 2026, the leaders and defence ministers of NATO's member countries gathered in Ankara for a summit whose central stake, according to Forbes, was confirming a defense spending target of 5% of GDP by…

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Reportage
- Published: 2026-07-20
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/report-the-ankara-summit-and-the-5-of-gdp-milestone-in-three-acts

## Key takeaways

- Forbes reports the summit's central stake was confirming the 5%-of-GDP target by 2035 for all 32 members, and that Turkey's hinge position between Europe, the Middle East and the Black Sea partly explains the choice of Ankara.
- Reuters data cited in the article shows only five members exceed 3.5% of GDP, with Lithuania at 5.33% and France at 2.22%; the US, Germany and the UK also sit below 3.5%.
- Baltic defence ministers called on March 27, 2026 to exceed 5%, following drone incidents in Baltic airspace; Estonia (5.1%) and Latvia (4.92%) join Lithuania as the most advanced group.
- The article compares the previous 2% target, which took over a decade to enforce, and notes the Ukraine war and drone incidents may add pressure this time.
- No precise, binding intermediate verification mechanism is documented, and the article says the real record will be written in national budgets over the next two years.

## Introduction

On **July 7 and 8, 2026**, the leaders and defence ministers of **NATO**'s **member countries** gathered in **Ankara** for a **summit** whose central stake, according to **Forbes**, was confirming a **defense spending** target of **5% of GDP** by **2035**. This report reads that **summit** in three distinct acts: what was actually said and confirmed, what the available figures reveal about national starting points, and what this gathering leaves unresolved for the Alliance's future.

*An **international summit** is rarely judged in the moment; it is judged by what it managed to make official, measurable, and potentially verifiable in the years that follow.* That is the lens structuring this report.

The choice of **Ankara** as host city is not neutral: **Turkey** occupies a hinge position between **Europe**, the **Middle East**, and the **Black Sea**, according to **Forbes**, making it a meeting place loaded with geopolitical meaning for an **Alliance** whose current strategic concerns span precisely these three regions.

## Act One: The Official Announcement of the Trajectory Toward 5%

### A target confirmed for all 32 members

The first act of this summit was the **official confirmation** of the **trajectory** toward **5% of GDP** in defense spending for all **NATO** members by **2035**, according to **Forbes**. This announcement, while not a total surprise for observers of the file, marks an important formal step in the evolution of the Alliance's collective budgetary **commitments**.

This kind of **collective commitment** on a nine-year horizon gives the Alliance a shared frame of reference, even though, as **Reuters** data shows, national starting points remain extremely variable from one member country to the next. *A shared frame of reference is only worth as much as each capital's real willingness to comply with it, not merely the signature affixed at the bottom of a communiqué.*

### The mechanics behind the final declaration

**Final declarations** at **NATO** summits generally follow a prior **negotiation process** among **national delegations**, meaning the text confirmed in **Ankara** had already been discussed and adjusted in the weeks leading up to the meeting. **This diplomatic process**, largely invisible to the general public, explains why a **consensus** could be reached despite budgetary gaps as pronounced as those documented between member countries.

## Act Two: The Figures That Contradict the Narrative of Unity

### Five countries above 3.5%, everyone else below

The second act of this three-part reading concerns the **figures published by Reuters** on **July 7, 2026**, which show that only five **NATO** member countries currently exceed 3.**5% of GDP** in core defense spending. *A target signed unanimously does not mean a shared budgetary reality; and it is precisely this gap between the text and the figures that this second act of the summit brings to light.*

**Lithuania**, at 5.33% of GDP according to **Reuters**, already exceeds the **final target** set for 2035, while **France**, at 2.22%, sits at less than half that target. This more-than-twofold gap between two member countries of the same Alliance concretely illustrates the diversity of national budgetary realities behind the **displayed unity** in **Ankara**.

### Major Western powers, lagging on this specific figure

The **United States**, **Germany**, and the **United Kingdom** all rank among the countries below the **3.5% threshold** of GDP, according to **Reuters**, a finding that contrasts with these three countries' traditional leadership role within the Alliance on matters of **collective defense**. This situation deserves to be named plainly in this report: the most influential powers are not, on this particular **indicator**, the furthest along.

This relative lag among **major Western powers** does not call into question their overall contribution to **collective defense**, measured in absolute terms, but it complicates the reading of a target expressed as a share of GDP, where the size of the national economy directly affects the spending level needed to reach the set threshold.

## Act Three: What the Summit Leaves Unresolved

### No clearly documented intermediate verification mechanism

The third act of this reading concerns what the **Ankara summit** did not settle: none of the available sources mention a precise, binding **intermediate verification mechanism** that would allow, year after year, for measuring each member country's real progress toward the 5% target set for 2035. **This absence** of a documented intermediate timeline leaves substantial uncertainty about the operational credibility of the **commitment** made in **Ankara**.

*A target without clearly set intermediate steps looks more like a direction than a marching plan; history will judge whether that direction was followed with the rigor today's figures call for.*

### The question of financing support for Ukraine, in the background

In the background of this summit, the question of **financing support for Ukraine** through mechanisms like **PURL**, which mobilized more than **$6 billion** in commitments according to NATO as of June 2026, remained closely tied to each member country's defense **budgetary trajectory**. More robust **national budgets** theoretically offer greater capacity to contribute to this kind of multilateral mechanism supporting Kyiv.

## The Turkish Context, Often Underestimated in Summit Coverage

### Ankara, a location choice that is not incidental

The choice of **Turkey** as host country for this summit, according to Forbes, is partly explained by its hinge geographic position between **Europe**, the **Middle East**, and the **Black Sea**, a region where several of the Alliance's main current strategic concerns are concentrated today. This location choice, though rarely commented on in detail in **media coverage** of the summit, deserves attention for what it reveals about NATO's current geopolitical priorities.

**Turkey**, a member of the Alliance for several decades, occupies a distinct position within NATO, both because of its military size and its direct proximity to several current zones of tension, making it a partner whose role goes well beyond that of a mere logistical host for this kind of gathering. *Choosing a summit location is never neutral; it always says something about the mental map the Alliance draws of its own priorities.*

### What the Turkish presence signals about the Alliance's internal balance

Hosting a summit this consequential for the Alliance's budgetary future on **Turkish soil** also sends a political signal about NATO's internal balance, where southeastern-flank countries occupy a growing strategic place alongside the **Baltic states** of the northeastern flank, both directly exposed to zones of tension with **Russia** or its regional spheres of influence.

## The Baltic States, the Most Insistent Voice Before the Summit

### A collective call as early as March 2026

Several months before the Ankara summit, the **Baltic defence ministers** had, on **March 27, 2026**, collectively called to exceed 5% of GDP in military spending, according to the **Latvian Ministry of Defence**. *It is often the voices most exposed to danger that speak first, and the story of this summit begins well before Ankara, in the joint statements from Baltic capitals in the spring of 2026.*

This Baltic call arose in the context of a **series of drone incidents** reported in **Baltic airspace**, a specific factual context that gives the Baltic position a legitimacy hard to dispute, independent of the broader **budgetary debates** running through the rest of the Alliance.

### From the Baltic call to collective confirmation

The path from the **Baltic call in March** to the collective confirmation in Ankara in July illustrates a recurring mechanism within NATO, whereby positions first championed by the **most geographically exposed members** eventually, over time, become reference points for the entire Alliance. This mechanism, documented here for the specific case of the 5% threshold, deserves to be watched for other strategic files to come.

## Lithuania, the Central Case Study of This Summit

### 5.33% of GDP, a figure that already surpasses the 2035 target

**Lithuania**, according to Reuters data published on **July 7, 2026**, devotes 5.33% of its GDP to defense, a rate that already exceeds the target set for the entire Alliance by 2035. This figure makes **Lithuania** a central case study for understanding what is concretely possible in terms of defense budgetary effort, when national risk perception reaches a sufficiently high level.

This **Lithuanian precedent** likely carried weight, at least symbolically, in the Ankara discussions, by demonstrating that a mid-sized country within the Alliance could reach, even surpass, a target others still consider distant. *A small country that exceeds the target quietly disavows the argument that 5% of GDP would be unrealistic for a mid-sized economy.*

### Estonia and Latvia, close trajectories

Alongside **Lithuania**, **Estonia** reports a rate of 5.1% of GDP according to Reuters, and **Latvia** 4.92%, making the three **Baltic states** the most advanced group in the entire Alliance on this specific **indicator**. This closeness in **trajectory** among the three **Baltic states** is no accident: it reflects a shared perception of regional risk, documented by their **joint statement** of **March 27, 2026**.

## What the Comparison With the Previous 2% Target Reveals

### A precedent that calls for caution

The **previous 2%-of-GDP target**, set by NATO several years before the 5% target, was met only gradually and unevenly by Alliance members, with significant delays among several Western **major powers** for many years. **This historical precedent** is an essential point of **comparison** for assessing the credibility of the new **trajectory confirmed** at Ankara.

*An alliance that took more than a decade to enforce a 2% target must, in all journalistic honesty, be questioned about its capacity to enforce a target two and a half times higher within the same timeframe.*

### What could be different this time

Several elements nonetheless distinguish the current context from the one that prevailed when the **2% target** was set: the **war in Ukraine**, entering its fifth year in 2026, and the **drone incidents** documented in **Baltic airspace** have created direct political and security pressure that did not exist to the same degree back then. This pressure could accelerate the **implementation** of the trajectory toward 5%, though this is not guaranteed by the sources available at this stage.

## The Role of Canada and Mid-Sized European Allies in This Dynamic

### A collective increase of $90 billion since 2024

According to **NATO**, European allies and **Canada** have collectively increased their defense spending by roughly **$90 billion** in 2021 **constant prices** since 2024, an effort that extends beyond the frame of the major powers most discussed in **media coverage** of the Ankara summit. This **collective increase** illustrates a broader movement than the most spectacular individual figures, such as Lithuania's, alone might suggest.

In **nominal terms**, this rise represents roughly **$139 billion** for 2025 alone, according to NATO, a roughly **20%** increase compared to previous levels. This figure gives a concrete measure of the Alliance's pace of collective progress in the years immediately preceding the Ankara summit.

### An effort that remains unevenly distributed among members

Despite this notable **collective progress**, the distribution of this additional budgetary effort remains highly uneven among member countries, as confirmed by the gaps Reuters documented between **Lithuania** at 5.33% and **France** at 2.22%. This uneven distribution, already visible before the summit, was not resolved by the confirmation of the **5% target** in Ankara, which sets a **shared goal** without imposing an identical **pace of convergence** for each country. *A **shared goal** without a shared pace remains, by definition, a multi-speed goal.*

## What Journalists Present in Ankara Were Able to Observe

### Tightly managed institutional communication

The **institutional communication** around the Ankara summit, relayed notably by Forbes, emphasized Alliance unity and the confirmation of the trajectory toward 5%, without dwelling at length on the budgetary gaps documented elsewhere by Reuters. *An international summit always tells the story it wants to tell; it is the job of independent reporting to complete it with the figures official communication prefers to leave in the background.*

This tight control of institutional communication, while legitimate from a diplomatic standpoint, does not excuse a critical, figures-based reading of what the summit actually produced, beyond declarations of unity.

### The questions few outlets asked on the ground

Few media outlets covering the Ankara summit pressed, with equal insistence, the question of **how** the major Western powers currently below the **3.5%** threshold of GDP concretely plan to close their gap by 2035. This relative absence of critical questioning in the summit's immediate coverage is, in itself, a notable finding for anyone trying to understand the real scope of this commitment.

## What the American Delegation Defended in Ankara

### A pressure narrative maintained, despite America's own position

The **American delegation**, according to available coverage of the summit, continued to press European allies to increase their defense spending, even as the **United States** itself reports, according to Reuters, a rate of 3.17% of GDP below the **3.5%** threshold referenced in several summit analyses. This **asymmetry** between American rhetoric and its own relative budgetary position deserves to be noted plainly in this report.

The **United States** remains, in absolute terms, the largest **budgetary contributor** to the Alliance's **collective defense**, a fact that nuances the purely proportional reading of defense spending as a share of GDP, without invalidating it as a **comparison** indicator between countries of different economic sizes.

### The question of fair burden-sharing

The **fair sharing of the collective defense burden** remains a recurring source of tension among NATO allies, and the Ankara summit did not escape this debate, even though official statements favored a consensual rather than confrontational tone on this specific point. *The **burden-sharing** question has, for decades, been one of the most recurring and least resolved topics at NATO summits; Ankara was no exception to this unwritten rule.*

## The Diplomatic Precedents That Prepared This Summit

### Preparation that began months before Ankara

The confirmation of the **5%-of-GDP target** in Ankara did not appear spontaneously at the summit: it rests on preparatory discussions carried out among **national delegations** in the preceding months, of which the Baltic call of March 27, 2026 is one of the most visible public milestones documented by available sources.

These **preparatory discussions**, largely conducted behind diplomatic closed doors, explain why **consensus** could be displayed so quickly at the summit itself, despite the considerable budgetary gaps later documented by Reuters. *What looks spontaneous at a summit has almost always been negotiated, word by word, in the weeks before.*

### The role of intermediate ministerial meetings

**NATO's ministerial meetings**, held regularly between heads-of-state summits, likely served as an intermediate **negotiation** channel to refine the exact terms of the 5% commitment, even though available sources do not detail the precise content of these ministerial exchanges ahead of the summit.

## What the Summit Signals for the Alliance's Upcoming Deadlines

### The next ministerial meetings to watch

The **upcoming NATO ministerial meetings**, in the months following the Ankara summit, will constitute a first concrete test of member countries' political will to translate the 5% commitment into verifiable national budgetary decisions. This report recommends watching, in particular, the **defense budgets** voted for 2027 in countries currently below the 3.5% threshold.

*The real record of Ankara will not be written in July 2026, but in the finance bills voted **capital by capital** over the next two years.*

### Media attention risks fading quickly

As with many international summits, **media attention** paid to the Ankara summit risks fading quickly once official statements are published, while the real work of budgetary verification will unfold over several years, far from the spotlight of diplomatic summits.

## What This Summit Concretely Changes for Ukraine

### An indirect but real link to financing Ukraine's defense

Although the Ankara summit focused primarily on NATO countries' internal **defense budgets**, the question of **financing support for Ukraine** remained present in the background, according to NATO, notably via the **PURL** mechanism, which mobilized more than **$6 billion** in commitments as of June 2026. Higher **national defense budgets** mechanically offer greater capacity to contribute to this kind of multilateral mechanism.

The Ankara summit was also an occasion to confirm **€70 billion** in pledged support to **Ukraine**, according to NATO, illustrating that the Alliance's internal budgetary agenda and its external support for Kyiv remain closely intertwined in the decisions made in Ankara.

### Continuity rather than a policy break

The Ankara summit reflects **continuity** rather than a break from NATO's earlier commitments to **Ukraine**, confirming mechanisms already in place rather than creating new ones. *Continuity is not the absence of news; it is sometimes the strongest proof that a commitment holds, summit after summit, without needing to be reinvented.*

## Conclusion

The **Ankara** summit will be remembered, in NATO's chronicles, as the moment the 5%-of-GDP target became an **officially confirmed trajectory** for the entire Alliance. But read in three acts, as this report has attempted to do, this summit also reveals the limits of that confirmation: considerable budgetary gaps between member countries, the documented absence of an intermediate verification mechanism, and media coverage that favored the narrative of unity over the figures that nuance it.

*Ankara will have been the setting for a **collective promise**; the next summits will tell whether that promise was kept, **capital by capital**, **budget by budget**.* It is that verification, year after year, that will give full meaning to the course set in July 2026.

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### 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.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Reuters — Five NATO countries above 3.5% of GDP in defense — July 7, 2026](https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/five-nato-members-seen-spend-over-35-gdp-core-defence-this-year-alliance-2026-07-07/)

- [NATO — Official 5% of GDP commitment](https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/defence-expenditures-and-natos-5-commitment)

- [Latvian Ministry of Defence — Joint Baltic statement — March 27, 2026](https://www.mod.gov.lv/en/news/joint-statement-ministers-defence-baltic-countries-drone-incidents)

### Secondary sources

- [Forbes — Stakes of the Ankara summit — July 1, 2026](https://www.forbes.com/sites/marktemnycky/2026/07/01/what-defense-leaders-will-discuss-at-the-2026-nato-summit/)

- [Euronews — Context of NATO's eastern flank — March 24, 2026](https://www.euronews.com/2026/03/24/nato-eastern-flank-germany-withdraws-eurofighters-from-poland)

- [Defence Ukraine — Context of the Baltic drone wall — 2026](https://www.defenceukraine.com/en/insights/baltic-drone-spillover-nato-drone-wall/)

---

Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/report-the-ankara-summit-and-the-5-of-gdp-milestone-in-three-acts