Summary

  • President Donald Trump has publicly praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a diplomatic partner, damping Western criticism of Erdogan’s domestic clampdown ahead of next week’s NATO summit in Ankara.
  • Sinan Ulgen observes that Erdogan is playing a role in essentially containing the ire of the U.S. president toward the broader NATO alliance.
  • Marc Pierini notes that Erdogan wants to translate the technical success of the Turkish defense industry into political success for himself.
  • Turkish authorities have jailed hundreds of opposition figures and banned public demonstrations in Ankara during the summit to project state capacity and neutralize domestic contestation.

President Donald Trump’s public praise for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the prospect of advanced fighter jet sales are damping Western criticism of Turkey’s domestic political clampdown ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara. While the Trump administration signals openness to reversing Turkey’s removal from the F-35 program, Turkish authorities are simultaneously jailing opposition figures and banning public demonstrations in the capital, creating a summit environment that projects institutional strength while constraining the domestic political space. Former officials and analysts attribute the muted response from NATO partners to Turkey’s growing defense-industrial leverage and Erdogan’s personal rapport with the U.S. president, marking a departure from the prior administration’s approach.

Strategic utility and the containment of alliance friction

Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and director of the Istanbul-based think tank Edam, observed that Erdogan “is playing a role in essentially containing the ire of Trump.” According to Ulgen, the Erdogan factor “prevents this stance of the U.S. president from becoming too toxic” toward the broader NATO alliance. The documented diplomatic utility runs through Turkish mediation efforts: brokering last year’s cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, mediating in the war with Iran, and hosting multiple rounds of Russia-Ukraine peace talks despite maintaining an economic relationship with Moscow. Turkey has also built warships that expanded Ukraine’s Black Sea fleet, an effort for which Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has praised Erdogan. Vice President JD Vance signaled in June that U.S. officials were looking into ways to sell Turkey the advanced F-35 fighter jet. This potential sale would reverse the first Trump administration’s removal of Turkey from the program following Ankara’s purchase of a Russian S-400 air-defense system, a transaction that previously drove a wedge in NATO and triggered years of discord in Turkey’s defense relationship with Washington.

Defense-industrial leverage and political translation

Marc Pierini, a former European Union ambassador to Turkey and now a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, observed that Erdogan “wants this technical success for the Turkish defense industry to be reflected in political success for himself.” The documented defense-industry achievements driving this leverage include Turkey commanding NATO’s second-largest army, and Turkish-made drones earning international acclaim after Ukraine used them against Russian military vehicles in 2022. Baykar, the company that manufactures the drones, now exports them to more than 33 countries and established a joint venture last year with a major Italian aerospace firm. Additionally, another Turkish company designed and installed equipment at a Texas factory that is now one of the Pentagon’s largest suppliers of artillery rounds.

Domestic clampdown and the summit environment

Ahead of the summit, Turkish authorities have jailed hundreds of people in Turkey’s largest opposition party, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a likely presidential candidate seen as a credible challenger to Erdogan. Turkish officials say Imamoglu is on trial for corruption charges, which he denies. According to Human Rights Watch, police arrested “activists, lawyers, an academic and an LGBTQ rights activist on terrorism charges” during nighttime raids in June. Turkish authorities also banned public demonstrations in Ankara during the NATO summit. The spatial management of the summit and the management of the alliance relationship operate in the same field: the summit space is structured to project state capacity while neutralizing domestic contestation. Attending leaders are afforded clear sightlines of Turkish institutional strength, including state monuments and defense-industrial achievements, while the domestic opposition is systematically denied the public gathering spaces necessary to project political presence. Istanbul functions as the opposition center rendered geographically distant from the summit site.

Shifting institutional posture and competing narratives

David Satterfield, who served as U.S. ambassador to Turkey during Trump’s first term, described the arrests of opposition figures as “deliberate decapitation of political challenges.” Satterfield stated that the actions are being done with “a brazenness that I don’t think four years ago would have been quite possible,” characterizing Turkey’s political system as a “competitive authoritarian” system. He argued that failing to raise such issues does not enhance the ability to work with Turkey on strategic matters and noted that the diminished pushback from NATO allies represents a shift. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly framed the relationship differently, stating Trump has “a great relationship” with Erdogan, who has been “an incredible partner in the region.” The reporting frames this approach as a departure from the Biden administration, which kept Erdogan at arm’s length.

Before Trump became president, the reporting notes, such actions might have drawn public criticism from Turkey’s NATO partners in Europe, if not the United States. Today, few are calling Erdogan out, analysts and former officials said.

However, a counter-argument emerging from within the policy discussion resists a purely transactional reading of this accommodation. A person familiar with government thinking stated, “It’s very difficult to talk about trade-offs here. I don’t think that the West is turning a blind eye to what is going on in Turkey in return for mutual interests.” This source pointed to current American sanctions on the Turkish defense-industry agency and Turkey’s long-stalled application to join the European Union as evidence that accommodation is not absolute, indicating a compartmentalized management of strategic utility and domestic criticism on separate tracks rather than a single transactional exchange.

Unresolved structural tensions and institutional roles

Several structural tensions remain unresolved ahead of the summit. The F-35 question remains open, as Vance’s June statement signaled openness but no sale is documented. Turkey’s long-stalled application to join the European Union and current American sanctions on its defense-industry agency persist. Should accommodation fail, alternative trajectories include a Turkey further integrated into non-NATO defense supply chains and less responsive to Western diplomatic coordination, or a Turkey navigating continued sanctions while relying on its demonstrated capacity to build independent defense capabilities and broker regional deals.

Erdogan, who has served as Turkey’s prime minister and then president for more than two decades, remains a conservative Islamist and onetime political prisoner who has overhauled Turkey’s political system, concentrated power in the presidency, and still faces broad opposition over the country’s faltering economy and the erosion of political freedoms.

Satterfield argued that Western allies should register concern about the trajectory of Turkey’s political system, warning that the die is never cast forever in terms of competitive authoritarian systems. The reporting notes that visible activity addressing political freedoms, economic recovery, conflict-handling skills within Turkey’s political system, and institutional judging of democratic-norms compliance is not documented as active. Entities that could fill these roles include European NATO partners such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, European institutions including the EU and the European Court of Human Rights, the NATO institutional apparatus, and the Turkish opposition civic space, including Imamoglu’s Republican People’s Party. A specific limit the reporting surfaces is that in configurations where the person performing a mediator role is also the person whose alignment with one party is reshaping the alliance’s capacity to act, mediation can function as cover for the conduct Satterfield describes.

Analytical techniques used in this piece

This analysis applies the methods below. Each links to a short, plain-English explainer you can read and reuse.

Genius Loci — Sense of Place
Reads the character and felt quality of a place.
Principled Negotiation
Works a negotiation from interests, options, and objective criteria rather than positions.
The Third Side
Takes the vantage of the surrounding community that has a stake in resolving a conflict (Ury).