As the 36th NATO Summit opened this week in Ankara, Turkey's press split along familiar lines, with pro-government outlets celebrating the country's "historic" return to the alliance's center stage and opposition media training its lens on the security clampdown surrounding the event.
Pro-government dailies, led by Yeni Şafak, cast the summit — the largest since the 2004 Istanbul gathering — as validation of Turkey's rising defense-industrial clout. Coverage leaned heavily on official framing from Communications Director Burhanettin Duran, who described a "360-degree" review of allied deterrence, Ukraine, and Euro-Atlantic threats, alongside detailed logistics of Erdoğan's bilateral meetings with visiting leaders, chief among them Donald Trump. A notable scoop concerned reported friction over US arms transfers: Israeli media leaks cited by Yeni Şafak said Netanyahu had asked Trump to withhold F-35 jets and F-110 engines destined for Turkey's indigenous KAAN fighter, with Trump said to have promised "something that will please Turkey" instead. Analysts aligned with the government, including SETA and columnist Yahya Bostan, argued the summit confirms that Europe's post-American security anxieties are being resolved inside the NATO framework — with Turkey positioned as an indispensable partner — rather than through a rival European mechanism.
Opposition media told a different story. Cumhuriyet's Ahmet Süha Umar warned that the elaborate security theater around the summit — from cosmetic preparations to the "excessive" buildup at Etimesgut airport — combined with Trump's continual praise of Erdoğan, should raise alarm rather than pride, questioning what concessions Washington might now expect from Ankara. Other Cumhuriyet reporting linked the summit's timing to speculation about early elections and noted the government's conspicuous silence after US Ambassador Tom Barrack reportedly likened Turkey to "failed states" such as Syria and Iraq.
Sözcü focused on the Ankara governorate's 13-day ban on all demonstrations, rallies, and press statements in the capital, while the World Socialist Web Site reported more than 200 people detained in coordinated dawn raids against anti-NATO and antiwar activists in the days before the summit. Compounding the divide, Euronews Turkish reported that NATO's own accreditation office rejected press credentials for journalists from a wide swath of opposition and independent outlets — Cumhuriyet, Halk TV, Sözcü, BirGün, Evrensel, Medyascope, and Yetkin Report among them — prompting condemnation from Reporters Without Borders' Turkey representative, who called the unexplained rejections an affront to the public's right to information.
Independent analyst Murat Yetkin offered a middle assessment, arguing the summit could shift Turkey's institutional role within NATO "from periphery to center," pointing to overlapping developments — Syria's reconstruction, the US-brokered Zengezur transit corridor, and a PKK disarmament framework bill timed just ahead of the summit — as evidence Ankara is leveraging the gathering for gains well beyond the Euro-Atlantic security file itself.
Together, the coverage illustrates a Turkish press corps increasingly unable to agree even on what story the summit represents: a diplomatic coronation, or a case study in the costs of hosting one.