The NATO summit opening in Ankara on July 7-8 will do more than press alliance members to raise defense spending: it is set to showcase NATO's expanding footprint into the Middle East, the Black Sea and the Caucasus, according to a report by veteran Turkish journalist Murat Yetkin, published on YetkinReport.
Hosted by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the summit will bring together 32 leaders under what Yetkin describes as an emerging "NATO 3.0" doctrine. Its most visible signal, he writes, is U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to hold separate meetings on the sidelines with two non-NATO leaders invited personally by Erdogan: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, both scheduled for Wednesday, July 8.
According to Yetkin's account on YetkinReport, security for the summit has placed unusual strain on the capital. A three-month-old security operation, dubbed "Turquoise," has deployed roughly 70,000 personnel — including nearly 49,000 police officers and thousands of gendarmerie and cybersecurity staff — to secure routes to the presidential complex and the Ankara Congress Center. Parliament has suspended sessions for the summit dates, and Yetkin reports that hundreds of people, including civil society members and journalists, have been detained amid a government clampdown on anti-NATO protests, with police using force against demonstrators on July 5.
Yetkin's reporting also points to parallel diplomatic tracks: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is expected to meet Gulf counterparts from Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain under the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative, aimed at tying Syria's reconstruction to NATO influence and Gulf capital. Separately, National Intelligence Organization chief Ibrahim Kalin's recent talks in Iraq, followed by Erdogan legal adviser Mehmet Ucum's announcement of a framework bill on the Kurdish issue by end of July, underscore what Yetkin calls an "irreversible threshold" moment ahead of the summit.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will also attend, with Trump pushing the TRIPP transit corridor through Armenia toward Central Asia via Turkey. Yetkin argues these threads — from the 2022 Ukraine war's exposure of Black Sea security gaps to the wars touching Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran — leave Turkey, NATO's only member bordering all of these theaters, moving from the alliance's periphery to its center.