Türkiye’s growing leverage between NATO and the EU
On July 7-8, NATO allies gathered for their annual summit in Ankara. This is the first time Türkiye hosts the Heads of state and government in 20 years, the last one being in 2004 in Istanbul. The official event came at a moment in which NATO is facing a series of challenges. On the one hand, security concerns and international developments, from the war in Ukraine to military conflict and instability in West Asia, have now put the Alliance’s eastern and southern flank simultaneously in distress. On the other, NATO members have been undeniably divided on a series of issues, including the level of support for Ukraine and defense spending. The explicit scaling back of the US political commitment to the alliance makes it imperative for NATO allies, namely Canada and European countries, to accelerate efforts to assume greater responsibilities. It is precisely at the intersection of a more critical strategic environment and a reduced US military role in Europe, that Türkiye, the summit’s host, sees an opportunity to exploit.
Türkiye’s leverage rests on three mutually reinforcing pillars. First, its military capabilities have become increasingly difficult for NATO to replace. Second, Alliance decision-making grants Ankara institutional influence, despite its limited economic weight. Third, Europe’s growing defense ambitions are creating industrial dependencies that sit uneasily alongside Ankara’s political exclusion from EU defense initiatives. Together, these trends give Türkiye opportunities to extract concessions from, and carve out its role in, both NATO and the European Union.
The ambivalent yet indispensable partner
Today, Türkiye is the second largest NATO army, making it militarily indispensable; it possesses regional reach, operational experience, and growing defense-industrial capacity. Over the past twenty years, Türkiye’s defense industry has grown significantly more advanced, producing combat-tested drones, naval platforms and armored vehicles. Besides the military industry, Türkiye is able to offer regional access and a strategic position across several contested theaters: the Black Sea, the Balkans, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Caucasus, and West Asia.
Ankara’s reach thus extends well beyond NATO’s own borders, which grants Türkiye the ability to get where its NATO allies cannot. This has been the case in Syria, where Ankara maintains a critical military footprint, as well as in the South Caucasus; another example was Erdoğan’s proposal of Türkiye as a mediator in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. While none of this makes the country an extension of the Alliance in these theaters, it does establish it as a power in its own right, which Türkiye is perfectly aware of and willing to exploit.
This indispensability, however, comes bundled with friction. Türkiye’s assertive regional engagement in the Gulf, North Africa, and the Eastern Mediterranean does not always align with NATO’s wider interest in its southern periphery, exposing significant friction among members. The relationship between Türkiye and its Western partners further deteriorated sharply after the failed 2016 coup attempt against the current president, deepening mutual distrust as Ankara criticized its Western allies’ response while they grew increasingly concerned over Türkiye’s democratic backsliding.
Read also: The Gulf States after the Iran war and the NATO Summit
Hence, Ankara has often found itself at odds with other NATO members on many fronts. One of them is the dispute over Cyprus, dating back to 1974, as well as over the maritime boundaries and gas fields in Eastern Mediterranean. Türkiye’s confrontational foreign policy in these theaters directly affects Greece and Cyprus, and has been a source of irritation for other EU member states, building on the bitterness already present due to the stalemate of Türkiye’s EU accession process. Another test case of Ankara’s confrontational policies was its purchase in 2019 of Russia S-400 air defense missiles instead of F-35s (which prompted the US to impose sanctions in 2020), as a means to gain more autonomy from and better bargaining power with Western allies. Finally, NATO remains a consensus-based organization. This means that, while Türkiye may not dictate the Alliance’s policy, it can delay or condition collective decisions until its own security priorities receive attention. Ankara’s handling of Sweden’s accession demonstrated precisely this approach, with Turkish objections between the initial bid in 2022 and the completion of the procedure in 2024.
Yet none of these frictions has made Türkiye replaceable. Ankara has survived decades of disputes with NATO because the Alliance has repeatedly found it too useful to lose, while Türkiye has repeatedly found NATO too valuable to leave.
Locked out of the financing architecture
Financial pledges and defense spending have been among the summit’s central themes. European allies left the Turkish capital promising, once again, increased spending on the basis of the “The Hague defence commitment” of 2025, aimed largely at satisfying Trump’s demands on burden-sharing.
Yet the EU’s main defense-industrial financing instrument, the €150bn Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program, still leaves Türkiye on the outside. Ankara’s access is blocked by Greece, due to the maritime disputes in the Aegean and Türkiye’s 2019 maritime deal with Libya, and by Cyprus, over Türkiye’s occupation of the northern part of the island since 1974. This is so despite Ankara’s growing footprint inside European supply chains, producing an odd asymmetry in which Turkish systems enter Europe through partners like Leonardo or Safran, while Türkiye as a political actor remains, for the moment, outside the financing architecture itself. Indeed, Ankara has separately been pursuing talks on the Franco-Italian SAMP/T air and missile defense system, as part of a broader push to strengthen its national air defense. Ankara sees European strategic autonomy risking to become exclusionary (on the basis of a tightly “buy European” principle), building a defense-industrial base that draws on Turkish capability without giving Türkiye a seat in it.
However, because European countries increasingly need Turkish systems, excluding Ankara from defense financing becomes progressively harder to justify. The summit also unfolded in a political context that may work in Türkiye’s favor, particularly given the close Trump-Erdoğan relationship and renewed debate over burden-sharing. Although Türkiye was expelled from the F-35 program, Trump, who has openly cultivated warm ties with Turkish President Erdoğan, stated he might consider selling F-35 jets to Türkiye and plans to lift sanctions on the country. Besides, the inclusion of the Defense Industry Forum within the summit program was of particular significance, given the presence of several Turkish companies operating in the sector and the tangible progress that Türkiye has achieved in this field – and that it wanted to showcase.
Read also: EU and Turkey: a relationship in search of new pillars
Hence, the more Europe attempts to expand its defense-industrial base, the more difficult it becomes to separate industrial efficiency from political preferences. The awkward situation in which Europe benefits from Turkish industrial capacity while denying Ankara institutional participation becomes, in and of itself, leverage for Türkiye, which can argue that Europe’s defense ambitions are becoming dependent on a partner it continues to exclude politically.
Inside NATO, outside the EU, but shaping both
As the EU continues to build its own security and defense architecture, Türkiye occupies a unique position: inside NATO, outside the EU, but shaping both. Since the 2004 Istanbul Summit, Türkiye, and the Alliance it belongs to, have changed considerably.
Türkiye’s strategic importance within NATO has grown steadily as the country shifted from passive participant to active architect. Geographically, it remains the only ally straddling the Black Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, and the gateway to the Caucasus and West Asia simultaneously. Its “defense-industrial revolution” is no longer an aspiration either: Institutionally, the Alliance is set to formalize this shift, with Türkiye due to assume command of NATO’s Allied Reaction Force starting in 2028. Together, these ongoing developments reinforce Türkiye role from “useful-but-difficult” flank state to one of the Alliance’s structural pillars, even as its political standing within the Euro-Atlantic community remains, as ever, contested.
As the United States pulls back its presence, and with it a measure of its influence in the Alliance, Türkiye, more than any other ally, will want to fill the space. If Ankara’s next chapter is one of genuine integration or continued transactional leverage will depend on whether the EU and Türkiye can convert their mutual necessity into a durable framework that outlasts the current alignment of interests between Erdoğan, Trump, and a Europe still calibrating how much of its own defense it is willing to own.
