Ankara is holding its breath, almost literally, ahead of the Nato summit on July 7-8. 

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be hosting thousands of participants including US President Donald Trump, heads of state and government from the 30 other Nato member countries, EU and Nato top brass, invitees like President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine, and dozens of accompanying foreign and defence ministers.

Major arteries will be closed to the public, especially around the 1,000-room presidential palace, the defence ministry’s “Crescent and Star” complex, the main conference centre and the US embassy – all on once-green land to the west of the city centre.

A nearby military aerodrome nearby has been converted in just eight months into a monumental VIP facility complete with 12.5 kilometres of new approach roads and bridges and a runway long enough for Air Force 1.

Main roads in and out of the city centre – and to Esenboğa, the airport for ordinary mortals – will be reserved for Nato convoys “as required”. Most public servants have been given paid leave to reduce the traffic further. Civilian flights, local bus services and rubbish collections are all being rescheduled. Access to streets around 15 hotels will be restricted and any parked vehicles removed. 

Forbidden city

The Ankara glimpsed by visiting dignitaries from their limousines and shuttles will be shorn of its routine congestion. Crumbling apartments yet to be superseded by tower blocks or shopping malls have disappeared behind multi-storey billboards (advertising Nato). Some have received a new lick of paint. Any stray dogs that have hitherto evaded death or incarceration in shelters are to be rounded up.  

Over 50,000 security staff will be on duty. Public gatherings have been banned for two weeks. Leftist parties and professional associations will protest Nato at their peril. Demonstrations against the imprisonment of opposition mayors and the replacement of the leader of the opposition will be paused. Unpaid miners, unemployed teachers, impoverished pensioners and all other aggrieved factions must suspend their running battles with pepper gas and detention until the West’s big guns have departed. 

Domestic image

These arrangements will not endear Nato or Erdogan to a nationalist citizenry somewhat indifferent to Nato’s future, defence spending targets or Ukraine, yet broadly hostile to the United States and disaffected with Europe. They may nevertheless contribute to the president’s credentials as a powerful leader able to hobnob and haggle with other world leaders – the kind of man Turkey cannot afford to pension off in 2028, whatever the constitution has to say.

Roadblocks and body checks, meanwhile, will underline the omnipotence of the security apparatus and the futility of contesting Erdogan’s conservative, neo-Ottoman vision. To illustrate the point, over 200 academics, lawyers, trades unions, journalists and picnicking environmentalists have been detained in dawn raids on grounds of preventing terrorism.

Back to the West

Turkey joined Nato in 1952 and entered an association agreement with the EU in 1963. The West is its largest business partner and financier. However, relations are littered with snags from maritime disputes with Greece to the Armenian genocide issue.

Frustration with Western arms embargoes, snail’s pace EU accession talks and EU policies on visas, Cyprus and human rights led Erdogan to purchase a Russian air defence system in 2017 and attend a summit of the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in 2022. Turkey avoided sanctioning oil and gas supplier Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But the Western axis has proved resilient. Trump’s second term, in particular, has given Erdogan a second opportunity to manage US ties through personal contacts with his US counterpart, notwithstanding their stormy past and conflicting views on Israel.

From “should” to “must”

Turkey boasts Nato’s second largest army, a burgeoning defence industry and growing influence in its region. It sits astride key migration and trade routes and has one of the youngest populations in Europe.

Officials would once argue that the West should cooperate with Turkey in line with its historical commitments. Now Erdogan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan declare that the EU and US have no choice but to treat Ankara as an equal partner for their own future safety and wellbeing. “There is nothing to be gained,” the president asserts, “by excluding Turkey’s defence capacity for the sake of narrow political interests.”

Shifting balance?

In response, the EU has neither resumed accession talks (shelved in 2018) nor updated its 1996 customs union with Turkey. The European Parliament continues to lambast Turkey over political prisoners and freedom of speech. But political dialogue has intensified. Days before the EU summit, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas and the commissioners for enlargement and internal affairs & migration visited Erdogan and waxed lyrical on Turkey’s importance to Europe.

In 2022, Stockholm agreed to cooperate against Kurdish nationalist extremism before Ankara unblocked Swedish entry into Nato. Nato missile defences countered alleged Iranian missiles strikes against Turkey in March this year. Nato is setting up a multinational corps headquarters in Adana in southern Turkey and a maritime component command in Istanbul.

All eyes on Trump

The Trump administration has not favoured Turkey over import tariffs but has pleased Ankara by acquiescing in the integration of Syrian Kurdish forces into the national armed forces controlled by Damascus. A long-running US court case against Turkish state bank Halkbank for evading Iranian sanctions has been abandoned. On June 26, the White House notified Congress that it will permit Turkey to buy General Electric F110 engines for its home-grown Kaan fighter jet programme.

Trump just might be able to steamroll Congress (and the Jewish lobby) regarding the F100 engines. However, Turkey’s re-inclusion in the multinational F-35 fighter jet project, and the modernisation of its F-16 fighter jets, still require approval. Defeat for the Republicans in November’s mid-term elections could render this almost impossible.  

Critical Turkish commentators also question what the wheeler-dealing president is seeking in return. Perhaps an unfavourable settlement on Cyprus and Cypriot membership of Nato? New risky military obligations in the Middle East and Asia? Or a revision of the Montreux Convention to give the US and Nato warships access to the Black Sea? 

Less identity, more deals

Right now, Ankara is pulling out the stops for Nato. Erdogan has called for a security network stretching “from Texas to Ankara” without any ifs or buts. Veteran far right leader Devlet Bahceli, whose party supports Erdogan, says that Turkey is at the heart of “all the vital and critical issues Nato faces”. 

The US president, for his part, has repeatedly expressed his liking for Erdogan and suggested that he is only attending the summit because Erdogan is hosting it.

But for Ahmet Erdi Öztürk of London Metropolitan University, writing in Turkish in the Yetkin Report, we live in an age of “temporary encounters rather than lasting friendships, of issue-based transactions rather than common values, and of mutual benefit rather than loyalty to alliances”. If Turkey is swinging back to the West, it is not in an emotional sense, but a matter of less identity and more trades. 

See you after the summit then, as the locals are saying to one another while they head for their hometowns or seaside flats, or retreat to their homes for a few days of football on TV.