NATO's Ankara summit begins today. The summit is seen as being at a critical juncture for NATO's future, and decisions expected to be taken there are anticipated to have a vital impact on the alliance's future.
On NATO's official agenda, the first item will be addressing how much of the burden-sharing commitments decided at previous summits have actually materialized, along with the shortfalls experienced in implementation. Under this heading, it will be decided that increasing defense spending alone is not sufficient, and that burden-sharing must therefore be made strategic through joint procurement and defense-industry integration. The aim will be to fix bottlenecks in procurement, air defense and personnel capacity that would raise deterrence.
Second, the framework for a new positioning that would narrow the Europe-U.S. divide and "keep the U.S. engaged" will be on the table. In this context, discussions will cover the Europeanization of NATO through the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program and the problems that would arise if European security were left solely to EU member states, such as how the non-member countries like the United Kingdom, Türkiye and Norway would be treated under a different status.
