“The Ankara Summit underscores Turkey’s evolution into a strategic bridge for NATO, anchoring Atlantic security to Middle Eastern geopolitics—spanning Ukraine, Iran, and the Arabian Gulf. It further positions Ankara as a testing ground for burden-sharing and the recalibration of regional security dynamics at a critical global juncture.”

Executive Summary

This paper examines the implications of holding the NATO summit in Ankara as an indicator of Turkey’s repositioning within the Alliance — not merely as a matter of protocol hosting, but as a connecting link between the Russia–Ukraine war and the shifting security landscape in the Middle East. The summit reflects an Atlantic trend toward redistributing defense burdens, strengthening the role of military industries, and expanding the concept of collective security to include the Alliance’s southern flank — particularly regarding Iran, the Arabian Gulf, and the security of navigation and energy.

In this context, Turkey emerges as an indispensable actor for NATO, given its geopolitical position and its capacity to link the Black Sea with the Middle East. As for Iraq, the significance of the summit lies in the fact that new security arrangements are taking shape around it and directly affecting its interests, while Baghdad has yet to develop a clear vision of its place within them or effective negotiating tools to protect its interests and sovereignty.

Introduction

The Turkish capital, Ankara, is hosting the 36th NATO Summit on July 7–8, 2026, with the participation of the leaders of the Alliance’s 32 member states, foremost among them U.S. President Donald Trump, alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of South Korea, and senior European Union leaders in parallel events. This marks the second time Turkey has hosted a NATO summit, following the Istanbul Summit of 2004 — twenty-two years ago.

Three main issues dominate the agenda:

• Defense Spending: Verifying implementation of the pledge made at the 2025 Hague Summit to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035.
• Military Support: Securing €70 billion in military support for Ukraine in 2026, with similar levels expected in 2027.
• Southern Flank: Addressing the security of the Alliance’s southern flank and the Iran file — which marks the real strategic shift.

On the summit’s margins, two events reveal the direction of travel: a defense-industries forum expected to announce contracts worth tens of billions of dollars, and a ministerial meeting between NATO foreign ministers and their counterparts from Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

On the surface, the summit appears to be another Atlantic meeting focused on Ukraine and defense spending. At a deeper level, however, it is a moment in which Atlantic security is being reconnected with Middle Eastern security, and through which equations that directly affect Iraq are being reshaped, even though Baghdad is not present in the room.

Ankara Is Not a Protocol Detail

Choosing Ankara as the venue for the summit is not a protocol detail in an institution shaped as much by symbolism as by strategic calculations. Turkey is not an ordinary NATO member; it possesses the Alliance’s second-largest army, with nearly half a million personnel, and stands at one of the most sensitive points of contact between the Atlantic space and the Middle East’s most volatile flashpoints — from Syria and Iraq to the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean.

By holding its summit in Ankara only months after the Iran war and amid shaken energy security in the Arabian Gulf, the Alliance is sending a practical message: the center of gravity of threats is no longer confined to the eastern front with Russia, and the “South” has become part of the definition of collective security rather than an external margin.

In this sense, Turkey’s hosting of the summit does not appear to be merely a political reward for Ankara or recognition of its status within the Alliance. Rather, it forms part of a broader process of repositioning Turkey and upgrading its role within two intertwined equations:

• The Middle Eastern Equation: NATO needs Turkey as a balancing platform in the Middle East, where the files of Iran, the Arabian Gulf, Syria, Iraq, energy, migration, and maritime security intersect.
• The Black Sea Equation: It needs Turkey in its approaches to the Russia–Ukraine war, as the NATO member overlooking the Black Sea, capable of keeping channels open with both Moscow and Kyiv, and holding part of the equations governing maritime corridors, energy, and armaments.

The Ankara summit therefore carries a dual message: there can be no stable Atlantic security without the eastern front, and no effective management of the southern flank without Turkey.

There is another equally significant dimension, tied to the personal and political symbolism of Turkey’s hosting. Trump announced that his participation came in response to a personal request from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after months of publicly questioning Washington’s commitment to Article 5 and hinting at a review of the U.S. military presence in Europe. The summit also comes at the height of a Turkish–American reconciliation track, framed by the lifting of restrictions on defense trade, the reopening of the F-35 fighter jet file, and deals for European air defense systems.

In this sense, Ankara is presenting itself as the link connecting the Alliance to its troubled South, while the Alliance appears to need that link more than ever. The Ankara summit confirms that Turkey is becoming a strategic bridge for NATO — linking Atlantic security to Middle Eastern dossiers, from Ukraine and Iran to the Arabian Gulf — and a testing ground for burden distribution and the drawing of new regional security balances at a sensitive international moment.

Redistributing the Burdens

The operational headline of the summit is “burden-shifting”. Europe and Canada increased their defense investments by more than $139 billion in 2025 alone, while Ukraine’s funding for the next two years will be secured with almost no direct U.S. contribution. Yet reading this shift as a mere accounting exercise misses its essence: what is being redistributed is not only the bills, but also the maps of dependence and subordination.

When the defense industry becomes the focus of an entire summit — through a dedicated forum, contracts worth tens of billions, and U.S. projects announced from Turkish soil — weapons cease to be mere commodities and become instruments for engineering alliances. Whoever owns the production lines possesses, to some extent, the power to decide who is armed, when, and under what conditions — and thus, in reality, holds part of the decision over the security of others.

Turkey grasped this equation early, building a drone and defense-systems industry that led NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to describe what has taken place there as a “revolution”. Yet the lesson here is not Turkey’s alone. In the new Atlantic phase, which Rutte calls “NATO 3.0,” a state’s weight within the security system is no longer measured by its geography alone, but also by its capacity to produce and to sustain. For states that possess neither an effective defense industry nor an independent armament decision, the margin of maneuver will narrow as this new political market expands. What is being redistributed in Ankara, then, is not only the defense bills, but also the maps of dependence and subordination.

Iran and the Arabian Gulf

The most telling point for our region is what Reuters has anticipated, based on leaks about the final communiqué: an affirmation by the Allies that Iran “must never possess a nuclear weapon,” and a call on Tehran to show “full respect for freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz”. The two phrases may sound familiar in U.S. discourse, but their inclusion in the communiqué of an Atlantic summit carries a different meaning. NATO’s final communiqués are documents drafted by consensus; they establish the positions of the Alliance as a system, not those of its members individually. When the Strait of Hormuz — a waterway that no NATO member borders — becomes an item in a collective-defense document, it means that energy security and navigation in the Gulf are being treated as an extension of Atlantic security itself.

The context explains the timing. The summit convenes only weeks after fragile arrangements halted the war with Iran, amid faltering negotiations over the nuclear file and navigation, and while Tehran is passing through an extremely sensitive moment of internal transition.

In parallel with this language of deterrence, the foreign ministers of four Gulf states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — are sitting at the table with NATO foreign ministers in Ankara, in a clear upgrade of the Gulf–Atlantic partnership track launched with the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative in 2004. Thus the picture is complete:

• Iran is addressed in the communiqué as a source of threat.
• The Gulf is summoned to the table as a partner.
• Turkey embraces the scene as a strategic bridge.

Between these three sides stands a state directly touched by all of these arrangements, yet represented in none of them: Iraq.

Iraq stands as the state most directly impacted by the summit’s arrangements, yet it remains unrepresented in any of them: Iran is addressed as a threat, the Gulf is engaged as a partner, and Turkey hosts the scene as a strategic bridge.

Iraq: The Absent State Around Which the Maps Revolve

Paradoxically, until only a few months ago, Iraq was the only country in the Mashreq where NATO maintained an actual field presence. The NATO Mission Iraq (NMI) was launched in 2018 at Baghdad’s request as a non-combat advisory and training mission, comprising around 750 personnel from more than twenty countries.

Yet the regional war of March 2026 prompted the Alliance to evacuate all mission personnel to Europe, and it has since run its operations from a regional headquarters in Naples, Italy, while Alliance officials speak of reactivating the mission later “under new arrangements”. This means that NATO’s presence in Iraq is itself passing through a moment of redefinition — but one being drafted in Brussels and Ankara, not in Baghdad.

This coincides with the gradual drawdown of the international coalition’s presence according to timetables agreed with Washington, an unresolved internal Iraqi debate over the future of weapons outside the framework of the state, and the country’s position in any coming escalation in the Gulf.

Here the Iraqi paradox of the Ankara summit comes into view, as its agenda items touch Iraq in multiple ways:

• The Iran item concerns its neighbor, economic, and security partner — a power with deep influence inside the country.
• The Hormuz item concerns the primary artery of its oil exports.
• The Gulf–Atlantic track redraws its immediate geopolitical environment.
• Turkey’s rise within the Alliance touches a neighbor with which Baghdad intersects over water sharing, border security, and the strategic Development Road project.

Yet, in this architecture, Iraq holds no status, no seat at the table, and not even a declared position paper. The problem is not simply the absence of an invitation; Iraq is not a NATO member, nor a candidate for membership, and it may have no interest in folding itself into a military alignment that would turn it into a frontline state.

The problem runs deeper: a new regional–Atlantic security architecture is taking shape around the country, while Baghdad deals with its components through fragmented reactions — treating the NATO mission as one file, the international coalition as another, and Iran as a third. What is missing is an overarching vision that defines what the Iraqi state wants from its relationship with the Alliance, the limits it will not accept being crossed, and the guarantees it demands in return for any role. States that lack a vision of their place in these new architectures are not merely excluded from them; they gradually become their object — arenas over which balances are managed, rather than active parties negotiating over them.

Final thoughts

The Ankara summit does not make Turkey merely the host of a high-level Atlantic gathering; it reveals the country’s move to a more central position in NATO’s new calculations. As the Alliance redistributes its defense burdens amid the Russia–Ukraine war, it finds in Turkey an anchor point joining the Black Sea and the Middle East — bridging the requirements of deterrence in the North with the management of balances in the South.

From this angle, the summit appears as a moment for redefining the Alliance’s southern flank: not as a geographic margin, but as a vital space where energy security, Iran, the Arabian Gulf, the defense industries, and the future of the relationship with Washington all intersect. The countries of the region, foremost among them Iraq, will have a direct stake in the outcomes of this Turkish–Atlantic repositioning, whether they are present in the room