Rabia İclal Turan
15 May 2026•Update: 15 May 2026
Experts gathered at a panel Thursday in Washington, DC highlighted Türkiye's growing strategic weight in NATO, saying its upcoming summit in Ankara offers an opportunity to redefine the alliance for a new geopolitical era.
The event, titled "The Turkish-American Alliance at the Heart of NATO's New Geopolitics," was hosted by the SETA Foundation and moderated by SETA Executive Director Kadir Ustun.
The panel came ahead of the 2026 NATO Summit scheduled for July 7-8 in Ankara, marking the second time that Türkiye will host a NATO summit following Istanbul in 2004.
Summit as 'first steps' for new era
Cagri Erhan, chief advisor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, framed the summit within a longer arc of alliance transformation.
"As during the conditions in the early 1950s, the United States and Türkiye will play the leading role for this new era of transformation," he said.
"The upcoming summit in Ankara will witness the first steps for the brilliant future ahead."
Türkiye and US played ‘decisive role’ in regional security issues
James Jeffrey, a former US ambassador to Türkiye and a Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute, said Türkiye has played a decisive role across every major security challenge in recent years.
“Türkiye, along with the United States, has played the decisive role in all of the huge security issues over the past few years, from Ukraine through the Caucasus, the Black Sea, the Balkans and in the Middle East,” he said.
"Türkiye has done at least as much as the United States to secure the NATO realm, which extends, obviously, because it's Türkiye’s borders, into the Middle East.
"This summit offers us a great opportunity, but it is only the capstone of ongoing conversations between Türkiye and the United States in a larger NATO context," he added.
Defense industrial shift
Rich Outzen, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, pointed to growth in the US-Turkish defense industrial relationship.
"The new paradigm is Türkiye makes good enough stuff that there's actually US companies that want to buy it," he said, citing collaboration in maritime and shipbuilding, drones and artificial intelligence (AI).
He argued that the two countries share a capability that few NATO allies can match.
"The combination of combat experience, industrial capacity and an engineering capacity to put those things into the field is pretty hard to achieve," he said, calling the US and Türkiye "the engines of real hard power deterrence and real hard power capability for the Alliance."
“There's some issues with NATO cohesion, there's some issues in the bilateral relationship, but the trend is good,” he added.
Türkiye as 'responsible adult'
Roger Kangas, an advisory board member at the Caspian Policy Center, said the Ankara summit could help NATO shed what he called "unintentional baggage" about its global role and refocus on core capabilities.
He suggested that Türkiye may need to serve as a bridge between diverging allies.
"Türkiye may have to be the responsible adult in the room and bring some of these warring parties together…and have them come to an agreement on how the organization can move forward," he said.
