Overview
The 2026 Ankara Summit affirmed the “NATO 3.0” trajectory, in which the US seeks to pass off alliance operational leadership to the Europeans. However, there is no obvious regional leading power to take on this responsibility. The US is warming to Türkiye due to its dynamic defense industrial base, experience with NATO mission commands, and strong conventional force. However, the rest of NATO Europe is wary of Türkiye’s hedging with Russia, blocking Türkiye from EU defense industrial initiatives. Nonetheless, momentum is gaining for stronger EU-Türkiye defense cooperation. Greece and Türkiye have begun a rapprochement to resolve maritime disputes, and the EU is backing a new UN plan to reconcile Cyprus’ frozen conflict. Upside risks of greater Turkish leadership include leveraging Türkiye’s defense industrial capacity for Europe’s rearmament. The downside risks include policy misalignment if NATO Europe compartmentalizes or implicitly supports Ankara’s independent foreign policy.
The Growing Divergence of the US and EU on Türkiye
As NATO shifts to European operational leadership, no regional leading power is poised to shape the alliance’s direction. The UK maintains strong expeditionary capabilities, but its stagnant economic growth prevents a rapid build-up of conventional forces. France has similar budgetary problems, and spending increases have prioritized exquisite capabilities related to its nuclear deterrent. Germany’s rearmament will take years at full speed, and its strategic culture must adapt to leading rather than following. This leaves Türkiye, whose military spending is peer to France when adjusted for purchasing power. The US, concerned with rewarding allies that step up, appears to be warming to the prospect of greater Turkish leadership. This is best exemplified by US President Donald Trump’s recent push to lift sanctions on Türkiye’s Defense Industry Agency (SSB) to allow for the sale of the F-35 and jet engines to Türkiye, conditioned on transferring an unused Russian S-400 air defense system to a third country.
The US’ improved impression of Türkiye is shaped by three factors. First, Turkish defense spending has grown by 94% in the past ten years, putting it on the same upward trajectory as Germany (118%) and Poland (207%). This has enabled a renaissance of the Turkish defense industry. From 2021-2025, Turkish arms exports grew 122% compared to the previous five-year period, the second highest in the alliance only to Italy (157%). More importantly, Türkiye exports about 65% of the world’s advanced drones, a key capability that has influenced how modern conventional warfare is fought. For example, Bayraktar TB2 was utilized by Ukraine before it developed its own homegrown FPV drones, and TB2s are still being produced within Ukrainian territory. Beyond drones, Türkiye will help reconstitute the Ukrainian navy through selling four Ada-class corvettes, small warships capable of specializing in surveillance and anti-submarine warfare.
The second factor is that Türkiye has taken leadership initiative within NATO’s institutions. It intermittently leads the Kosovo Force, one of NATO’s few active multinational missions with out-of-area experience, alongside Italy and the US. Moreover, Türkiye is slated to take command of NATO’s Allied Reaction Force from 2028, a high-readiness force of up to 15,000 troops capable of acting across all domain areas, from air to cyber. This is an implicit endorsement of Türkiye’s ability to command NATO allied forces in the event of a crisis.
Third, US and Turkish interests are increasingly converging in the Middle East. Türkiye has supported Syria’s new government and mediated with Hamas, helping cement the Trump administration’s political settlement in Gaza. Disputes between the US and Türkiye, such as over the role of Syria’s Kurdish forces, are no longer active issues.
However, NATO Europe remains skeptical of Türkiye due to its strategic autonomy, which includes a hedging relationship with Russia. For example, Russia has expanded its energy investments in Türkiye, such as through financing and owning the anticipated Akkuyu nuclear power plant and the opening of the TurkStream gas pipeline in 2020, which remains the last functioning gas pipeline link to the EU. During the Ukraine war, Turkish export terminals have been accused of transshipping, blending and relabeling Russian barrels to circumvent the EU’s sanctions regime. And Türkiye remains a strong buyer itself, comprising 26% of all Russian oil product exports and a third of pipeline gas in June 2026. In June 2025, Türkiye and Russia made a commitment to raise the volume of bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2030, double from $52 billion in 2024.
In the security dimension, Türkiye has prioritized stabilizing its southern and eastern borders, sometimes in contradiction to NATO allies. For example, Türkiye fought against Kurdish forces in Syria armed by the US. Turkish drones played a decisive role in Azerbaijan’s triumph over Armenia, a French partner. Türkiye’s “Blue Homeland” doctrine claims maritime territory in the eastern Mediterranean as far south as Crete in direct dispute with Greece. And after the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, Türkiye opted to close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to all military vessels; this hindered NATO institutional cooperation but also isolated the Russian Black Sea Fleet from reinforcements, allowing Ukraine to reclaim dominance in the theater.
The Obstacles to Turkish Leadership
Since 2016, EU countries have settled on ad hoc cooperation with Türkiye on shared interests, such as combatting irregular migration and supporting connectivity diplomacy between Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, the lack of a structured security cooperation framework impedes Türkiye’s ability to take on a leading role within NATO. At an abstract level, NATO Europe distrusts the compatibility of Türkiye’s independent foreign policy, which treats the alliance as one overlapping set of relationships rather than an end in itself. As a middle power, Ankara’s balancing act across multiple theaters gives it leverage to extract concessions from and mediate between Russia and the G7. The US appears to be more comfortable with this overlap given the pressure to pivot away from Europe. The Europeans are not.
The EU also remains divided on including Türkiye in the bloc’s defense initiatives like SAFE (the €150 billion cash pot in defense investment loans) or PESCO (a structure facilitating joint ventures). France, a proponent of conditioning European defense investment within the bloc, has directly contested Turkish interests in Libya and remains skeptical of a Turkish role within Europe’s defense industrial base. France also militarily backs Greece, which would veto Turkish participation due to unresolved disputes in the Aegean Sea. Cyprus would follow due to Turkish troops occupying a third of its territory.
At a minimum, Turkish participation in EU defense initiatives would require Türkiye’s rapprochement with Greece and Cyprus. The overlapping Greek-Turkish disputes over the maritime Exclusive Economic Zones, specific islands in the Aegean, and the de facto partition of Cyprus have intensified due to gas discoveries in the region, estimated as high as 3.5 trillion cubic meters. A nascent eastern gas partnership between Israel, Cyprus, and Greece has been formed to explore commercial exploitation, but Türkiye has sent its own survey ships too. The UAE and Egypt, opposed to Türkiye’s support to Islamist factions throughout the Middle East, recognize Greece’s claims.
There is some momentum to resolve tensions. In December 2023, Greece and Türkiye hailed a new era of “good neighborly relations,” embracing dialogue to solve disputes. In February 2026, a bilateral meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis set a goal of $10 billion in bilateral trade by 2030, declaring their issues as “not unsolvable” under international law. The European Commission has supported a broader rapprochement, appointing Raffaele Fitto, the EU’s powerful Commissioner for the Regions, as the Special Representative for Cyprus last week. The Commission is backing a recent UN plan of “deliberate ambiguity,” essentially a confederation between the Cypriot entities under a small central government with ethnic division of seats. The plan has reportedly gained support from northern Cypriot authorities, but negotiations remain in early stages.
Momentum for an EU-wide rapprochement with Türkiye may also come from industry. In June 2025, Italian defense prime Leonardo entered a joint venture with Baykar to produce Bayraktar TB3 drones, the latest design, and field the drones on the Italian aircraft carrier Cavour. Just a year later, Italy’s M-346 fighter trainer conducted a test flight in crewed-uncrewed teaming with Baykar’s Kızılelma unmanned aircraft, one of the first experiments in the “loyal wingman” concept years before more complex sixth-generation fighter jet suites begin development. Baykar is also exploring MOUs with French companies to explore the integration of optic technology and navigation systems on its drone systems. Türkiye has increased the pace of defense industrial cooperation within a NATO framework, signing onto coalitions to produce conventional equipment like a common 155mm indirect fighting round and a ground-based precision strike capability to substitute the American ATACMS system. This could facilitate further joint ventures or tie-ups between European and Turkish firms, despite current EU incentives against it.
The Risks
Greater Turkish defense industrial collaboration in Europe could assist with a quicker ramp-up of defense industrial capacity across the bloc. Türkiye’s “start-up” defense ecosystem benefits from integration with six innovation clusters and frequent aerospace and technology fairs. The state-owned Defence Industry Agency can flexibly invest directly in companies, helping emerging companies break into the sector. This ecosystem can produce 120,000 advanced drones in 2025 using 80% of local content, plus a scale outmatching the rest of Europe. EU-based companies could benefit from tech and knowledge transfer, as well as deploy their capital to upscale the production of low-end items like ammunition.
A downside risk is that greater defense-industrial collaboration does not spill over to political alignment. EU member states will pump the brakes on Turkish defense cooperation if they perceive Türkiye as continuing a hedging policy with Russia or disingenuous efforts at defusing its rivalry with Greece. To an extent, Türkiye will maintain an independent policy in the Middle East and Africa, forcing EU states to compartmentalize those issues—and their implicit role if their capital scales Turkish defense capabilities—for the sake of strategy.
