About 11 years ago, while sitting in a branch of a coffee chain that so many in Istanbul now boycott, a veteran Turkish journalist told me something I have never forgotten. "A large part of journalism,” he said, leaning over the table, "is simply running.”

Last week, as thousands of media members sprinted through the corridors of the NATO summit in Ankara, trying to keep pace with the world's most powerful alliance leaders, that piece of advice echoed loudly in my ears. On the summit’s first day, June 7, we ran so relentlessly that by dawn on Day 2, I had completely abandoned my dress shoes for sneakers. Watching my international colleagues stride comfortably through the venue in practical footwear gave me the courage to do the same. Don’t judge me, as we Turkish journalists tend to place an almost ceremonial importance on suits and polished appearances, a persistent sectoral misconception born, perhaps, out of an established tradition or a lack of global field experience.

Yet the running, as it turned out, had begun long before any journalist laced up their sneakers.

Days before the first foreign delegates arrived, the Turkish capital itself had begun sprinting toward summit mode. For months, streets were repaired, medians were replanted, sidewalks were power-washed, and much more was done. It was a civic makeover that quickly became the subject of widespread public ridicule. Societies, after all, naturally resent the implication that their own daily lives deserve less dignity than the image projected to foreign dignitaries.

My taxi driver, who took me from my hotel in Çankaya to the Directorate of Communications a day before the gathering, delivered a blistering running commentary on this sudden metropolitan renovation.

"Look over there,” he chuckled, catching my eye in the rearview mirror. "I've never seen this street this clean in my life.”

A few blocks later, he pointed again.

"And for God's sake, look at that over there; there used to be piles of construction stones left there for months.”

To him, the freshly polished Ankara wasn't an achievement to admire; it was proof of administrative neglect, an indictment that the city could have looked this pristine all along if anyone had cared before NATO came to town.

Once he learned I was a journalist, I became part of the punchline. "So," he grinned, "if it weren't for NATO, you probably wouldn't have bothered coming to Ankara either, right?”

As if to soften the jab, he reached into the seat next to him and offered me a handful of cherries from some white plastic bags, which he was delivering to a municipal official after picking them up from a village outside the city. I have long since forgotten the official’s title and the village’s name, but I will never forget those cherries: ice-cold, impossibly sweet.

Naturally, I couldn't resist a counter-punch. "Well," I told him, "with cherries this good, it’s no wonder they aren't going to the local market. They could only ever end up on a director's desk."

Who won that particular rhetorical battle remains unclear. He was the quintessential, unapologetic Ankara man: blunt, quick-witted and impossible to offend. We parted ways with a warm promise to look him up the next time I was in town, and I left with his phone number. He was the head of a local taxi stand in Gaziosmanpaşa.

Credit must be given where it is due. The sheer professionalism of the Directorate of Communications became obvious the moment I stepped through the doors to collect my NATO accreditation badge. This paper card rapidly acquired the status of a hysterically sacred object over the course of the week. In the ecosystem of a summit, losing your wallet or your phone is a minor inconvenience; losing your badge means you might as well pack your bags and go home.

Once entrusted with this holy relic, you were dragged through countless security checkpoints and official shuttles and were finally deposited at the Nation’s Library of Türkiye, which had been temporarily transformed into the International Media Center.

Like any oversized government building, its brutalist scale has a way of making the individual feel profoundly small. Your first instinct isn't to admire the architecture but to aggressively find a workstation before someone else claims it. Within minutes, you find yourself conducting an informal discovery mission: Where are the power outlets? Which entrance is closest to the briefing rooms? And, as my colleague Amez Ahmed wildly asked the moment we arrived, where is the coffee?

If you've ever tried tackling Istanbul's Eminönü district on a chaotic Saturday afternoon, you might have an approximation of the density inside. The only difference is that instead of tourists and shoppers, you are being bumped into by media crews, stone-faced security officers and high officials.

Gradually, thousands of reporters settle into rows of desks, transforming the cavernous hall into a hyper-kinetic global newsroom. In this environment, you immediately begin gathering what journalists prize almost as much as confirmed facts: whispers. Which leaders are expected to speak? Which bilateral meetings are showing friction? Which background briefing is actually worth your time?

It was an overwhelming deluge of information. For the first hour, feeling the sensory overload, I was genuinely ready to catch the next train back to the relative sanity of my newsroom in Istanbul. But survival dictates that you stop trying to cover everything and commit to covering something, even when every passing conversation in the corridor feels like it might contain the day's definitive scoop.

The media center also doubled as a fascinating laboratory for national stereotypes. At the neighboring table, The Associated Press (AP) team described everything from the Wi-Fi speed to the tea cups as "awesome." A few desks down, a correspondent from The Guardian politely apologized to a paper napkin after accidentally knocking it to the floor. Nearby sat one of Deutsche Welle’s veteran editors in Türkiye; watching her work was a masterclass in journalistic discipline, incapable of wasting a single movement. (Sorry Ms. J., please take that as a compliment.) I couldn't help but wonder what other cultural stereotypes the rest of the room had assigned to us.

But there was little time to sit around and psychoanalyze our international colleagues. We had a newspaper to put out.

Once the initial shock of the environment wore off, the real choreography of summit journalism began. Coordinating with our central desk in Istanbul, our five-person Daily Sabah team huddled over laptops, checking on the day's diplomatic agenda. You have to divide assignments with surgical precision to avoid duplicating one another's reporting. One of us tracked the program, another monitored the bilateral side-meetings, while the rest of us began producing copy – typing furiously with one eye on our screens and the other glued to the live feeds of the briefing rooms. Amina Ali, one of our business editors, was already operating on an entirely different track, aggressively lobbying the press team of the Polish foreign minister to lock down an exclusive interview.

It is a bizarre, dual existence. A summit media center is both a high-pressure newsroom where you are racing against evening print deadlines and an invaluable networking event.

By the close of that first intense day, survival mode had quietly become second nature. If human beings are defined by their remarkable ability to adapt, nowhere is that more obvious than inside a high-stakes press center. We filed our initial stories, memorized the unwritten geography of the complex and swapped business cards with colleagues from half a dozen countries before finally getting back to our hotels.

Day 2 blurred into a continuous loop of the same routine, more coffee, more corridor briefings and a growing stack of notebook pages filled with official soundbites. Yet, it was merely the calm before the geopolitical storm. We were collectively pacing ourselves, consciously or otherwise, because everyone in the room knew what was approaching on the horizon.

Day 3 scandal

By Day 3, the pace quickened before sunrise. Our team arrived just after 6 a.m., only to discover that dozens of international journalists had already beaten us to the punch. The stakes that day were incredibly high, revolving almost entirely around two different figures: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the summit's host, and U.S. President Donald Trump, whose celebrity seemed to eclipse the other 30 world leaders combined.

That was when the summit's most dramatic media standoff unfolded.

Once we confirmed that Trump's press conference would take place in the main theater, we launched a military-grade operation to secure front-row seats. The goal was simple: get close enough to catch his eye, ask a sharp question and hear our newspaper's name broadcast on live international television. Questions would be asked by Mehmet Çelik, our editorial coordinator.

First came NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. We listened intently, but despite Mehmet’s frantic hand-waving, he wasn’t called upon. At the time, the distribution of questions felt deeply unfair. Looking back, with that massive crowd, perhaps it wasn't unfair. Please don’t judge, as perspective often arrives after the adrenaline wears off.

Then came the announcement that electrified the room: "Ladies and gentlemen, President Trump will shortly hold a press conference."

Suddenly, the U.S. advance team and Secret Service personnel flooded the stage, rearranging furniture and whispering urgently into their earpieces. Something was wrong. Moments later, an American official stepped to the microphone: "Ladies and gentlemen, we need everyone to vacate the room completely so we can conduct a final security sweep.”

"What the h...?”

They weren't just clearing the aisles; they were demanding that several thousand journalists abandon the seats they had spent hours defending. To make matters worse, the American team said we couldn't leave our equipment behind.

The protest was immediate and fierce. Journalists argued, negotiated and openly pleaded, refusing to surrender their hard-won territory. Eventually, faced with the ultimatum that Trump simply would not appear unless the room was cleared, we gave in. We won only one small concession: our bags could stay, but our seats were left to chance.

Evacuating that room felt less like a diplomatic summit and more like the chaotic opening minutes of a Black Friday sale. Many reporters immediately began livestreaming the eviction, turning the security sweep itself into breaking news.

I even caught sight of myself looking annoyed in the background of an Instagram live video posted by my brilliant former colleague, Habertürk’s Sena Alkan. It was a reminder that your professional frustration can become someone else's content in real-time.

Through persistence and luck, we managed to reclaim our seats. When Trump finally took the stage, the atmosphere was theatrical; listening to a world leader who commands more media presence than Taylor Swift is an undeniable experience. Despite all our efforts, the microphone never reached our row again. One of our politics editors, Emine Gider, was furious.

However, the disappointment vanished almost as soon as Trump left the stage and Erdoğan walked in. The contrast in media management was striking. Relaxed and conversational, the Turkish leader demanded no sweeping room clearances or logistical submission. He fielded questions with ease, injecting humor into a room that had been tense for hours.

The definitive moment of the summit occurred when Reuters’ Hümeyra Pamuk asked what Türkiye would do with its Russian S-400 missile system if it successfully reintegrated into the F-35 fighter jet program. Erdoğan smiled subtly and replied: "Keep watching us.”

Seen through a journalist's lens, that brief phrase encapsulated the entire summit. Throughout the three days, officials spoke endlessly of an alliance in transition, throwing around the term "NATO 3.0” as shorthand for an organization seeking to adapt to a security landscape changing faster than its own bureaucracy. Türkiye featured prominently in those heavy corridor debates; its surging domestic defense industry, particularly its game-changing drone technology, has transformed Ankara into an indispensable pillar of the alliance's future capabilities.

Whether NATO's latest institutional reinvention will succeed will take years to judge. For now, Erdoğan's brief answer remains the most sensible directive for us all: Keep watching.

I only hope my Ankara taxi driver is watching, too. He was cynical that his city only rediscovers its potential when foreign leaders come to visit. If NATO’s own geopolitical transformation proves to be just as visible as the newly cleaned streets of Çankaya, perhaps it will finally earn his approval.