How Trump and the NATO Summit Lend Legitimacy to Turkey’s Autocratic President
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is poised to use the Ankara summit to burnish his own credentials as a global power broker, and to signal his increasingly absolute power domestically.
Henri J. Barkey is professor emeritus at Lehigh University and has written extensively on Turkey, the Kurds, and other Middle East issues.
The two main protagonists at the July 7–8 NATO summit in Ankara, U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have each succeeded in imposing their personal preferences on the national interest as they pursue foreign policy. They are not leaders content with shaping policy through deliberative or institutional processes.
For Erdoğan, this means utilizing the summit as a stage to elevate his standing at a time of harsh domestic crackdown on political dissent. He intends to present himself as “the indispensable ally” to Europeans and a valued friend to the U.S. president. From almost the beginning of his rule in 2003, he has envisioned a global role for himself, and at a time beset by conflict and uncertainty, he clearly believes his moment has come. His real goal is to legitimize his worldview and undemocratic rule, and to make the prolongation of his already drawn-out reign appear natural.
He has managed the Russia-Ukraine conflict with skill, maintaining relations with both sides in a way that satisfies Europeans. Turkey has continued to arm Ukraine and, early in the war, brokered a corridor in the Black Sea that let Ukraine export its trapped grain while keeping a negotiating path open. Simultaneously, he has permitted Turkey to continue to trade with Russia and welcomed Russian tourists. His most important contribution has been Turkey’s ability to control access to the Black Sea under the Montreux Convention and to project reassurance. That contrasts with Trump, who has sown uncertainty with unbefitting outbursts about leaving NATO—threats that appear motivated by personal slights, such as Europeans’ failure to display loyalty.
Europeans thus face an especially thorny predicament. On one hand, they fear being abandoned by a mercurial president to face a revanchist Russian President Vladimir Putin. On the other hand, they dread having to rely even more on Turkey, which has, after all, the largest NATO army in Europe. That choice requires accepting an Erdoğan who has achieved near-total institutional capture at home, eviscerating civil society and the rule of law. The judicial system operates at his behest, prosecuting real and imagined opponents to sideline challengers. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Istanbul mayor and his most formidable rival, has been jailed on politically motivated charges, as have numerous other politicians, civil society figures, and journalists. He is now dismantling the main opposition party, which had pulled comfortably ahead in the polls, on top of the kayyum practice, in which the interior ministry routinely removes Kurdish mayors without cause soon after they win seats in local elections.
Europeans are deeply uncomfortable with this behavior and often condemn it, but at the diplomatic level, have adopted a pragmatic and transactional approach centered on security ties with Ankara. Erdoğan is well aware of the power he wields, which is enhanced by the Trump presidency.
Trump has removed the most significant obstacle to Erdoğan’s construction of a one-man authoritarian system—criticism and potential punitive moves from the United States. Whereas President Joe Biden kept a critical distance, Trump has praised him at every opportunity, reflexively siding with him—including against long-standing allies like the Syrian Kurdish forces—and amplifying his importance by proclaiming that he would not have attended the summit without Erdoğan’s personal solicitation.
Trump has gone further this year, overriding congressional objections when possible. On the eve of the summit, he notified Congress of his intention to sell Turkey roughly eighty F-110 aircraft engines—a deal long stalled on Capitol Hill—to build its own fifth-generation KAAN fighter, which has very advanced stealth technologies.
He has also suggested he would like to see Turkey rejoin the F-35 program. It was evicted from the program after Erdoğan, citing unsubstantiated beliefs that Western powers had a hand in the failed 2016 coup, purchased the Russian S-400 missile system, forfeiting $1.4 billion in down payments. Top U.S. officials had warned Erdoğan in no uncertain terms that the S-400 would compromise sensitive F-35 technologies, and under the National Defense Authorization Act, the United States is barred from selling F-35 parts as long as the S-400s remain on Turkish soil. Yet, with no change in their status, Vice President JD Vance has suggested the administration is examining whether Turkey “has complied with U.S. laws” to receive the F-35s. The search for a legal path around the statute, fierce congressional opposition, and the unchanged threat to sensitive technologies is on—so that Trump, in his words, can “do something that will make them very happy.”
This is not the first time Trump has bucked his own government to support Erdoğan. He twice withdrew U.S. troops from the Syria-Turkey border, where they had operated alongside the Syrian Kurds who helped defeat the self-declared Islamic State, effectively endorsing Turkish interventions in Syria that displaced more than 180,000 Kurds. After the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham toppled Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Trump was quick to embrace the new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, as a “great young, attractive guy,” and overnight lifted the Syria sanctions within his purview—handing Sharaa’s patron in Ankara yet another regional win.
The summit will bestow two major prizes on Erdoğan. The first is Trump’s appearance validating Erdoğan’s global role for outside audiences and his autocratic rule for his own population. Beyond the daily persecution, hundreds have been arrested ahead of the summit, yet the U.S. government, unlike any predecessor, has stayed utterly silent. Erdoğan’s government has even forced NATO to deny accreditation to opposition journalists, making the venerable institution a collaborator in blatantly undemocratic conduct.
The second prize is legitimacy. Having cajoled the democratic world into accepting him, he will pursue his global role and reshape Turkey’s political system with him at the helm.
This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.