President Donald Trump told reporters at the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7 that the United States will lift the sanctions it imposed on Turkey in 2020 and would "consider" selling Ankara F-35 stealth fighters, a striking reversal of a rupture that had strained relations between the two allies for years. "We're going to be taking the sanctions off, OK?" Trump said during a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, adding that Cabinet officials were working on it.
The sanctions date to 2020 and Turkey's purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air-defence system. Washington expelled Turkey from the F-35 programme in 2019 over the same acquisition, and Congress later barred any F-35 sale while Ankara keeps the S-400, on the grounds that operating the Russian system alongside the jet would expose its stealth secrets. Asked about Turkey's return to the programme, Trump said only that "it's certainly something we will consider" — a signal of intent, not a signed deal, and one that runs into a standing legal bar he did not explain how he would clear.
The overture drew immediate objection from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who urged Washington not to sell Turkey the aircraft, arguing that Erdogan "calls openly for the annihilation of Israel" and that the sale would "upset the power balance in the Middle East." The intervention underscored how a bilateral US-Turkey thaw ripples across the region.
The 2026 Ankara summit — the 36th NATO summit and the second Turkey has hosted, after Istanbul in 2004 — was billed by Secretary General Mark Rutte around three priorities: raising allied defence investment, expanding transatlantic defence-industrial production, and sustaining support for Ukraine. Rutte's framing casts Turkey, at the crossroads of the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Middle East, as a linchpin of the alliance's eastern flank.
But Trump used the stage to reopen fights that cut against that message of cohesion. He renewed his claim to Greenland and again questioned the scale of the US troop presence in Europe, suggesting Washington could draw down forces — comments that landed with allies already being pressed to shoulder more of the burden themselves.
Those allies are, on paper, delivering. Following last year's commitment to invest 5 percent of GDP in defence, NATO says European members and Canada raised core defence spending by about $139 billion in nominal terms in 2025, and several are expected to hit the 5 percent target in 2026, well ahead of schedule. The spending surge is the backdrop against which The Fold has tracked Canada's proposed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank and the wider scramble to fund rearmament.
The summit convened in the shadow of one of the deadliest Russian strikes of the war: an overnight barrage on July 6 that Ukrainian officials say killed at least 26 people in and around Kyiv, timed to the eve of the gathering. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pressed the summit for "strong decisions" and more air defences, turning Ankara into a test of how far the alliance will go beyond spending pledges.
For Erdogan, the optics are a win regardless of what is ultimately signed: the US president standing in Ankara, talking publicly about ending sanctions and reopening the F-35 door, elevates Turkey's standing inside the alliance at a moment when its leverage — as host, as a drone power, and as the gatekeeper of the Black Sea straits — is already rising.
The open questions are whether the sanctions relief and any F-35 pathway survive contact with US law and allied objections, whether the Greenland and troop-drawdown talk hardens into policy, and whether the summit produces concrete Ukraine commitments to match the rhetoric. The declaration and any sideline announcements over the two days will show which of the summit's competing signals wins out.