Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş will host parliamentarians from NATO member states on June 28-29 for the NATO Parliamentary Summit in Istanbul.

The event will precede the main NATO gathering on June 7-8 in Ankara, which will bring together heads of state and government from the alliance’s members.

Lawmakers from 32 countries, including Marcos Perestrello, chair of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, will be among the participants of the summit. The summit is being co-organized by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and provides a platform to exchange ideas between countries on the parliamentary level before July’s summit.

The Ottoman-era Dolmabahçe Palace will host the summit. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is also expected to attend the event and deliver a speech. The participants will also visit the National Technology Center of Baykar, Türkiye’s top drone maker.

July’s summit in Ankara could redefine the alliance’s future as it confronts mounting security challenges, trans-Atlantic tensions and growing pressure to adapt to a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape. It comes 22 years after Istanbul hosted a landmark NATO meeting widely regarded as a turning point in the alliance’s transformation from a collective defense organization into a broader global security actor. Officials, NATO representatives and international analysts have increasingly described the upcoming Ankara summit as a historic gathering that may shape what some observers call the alliance’s next phase of evolution.

The alliance has undergone profound changes shaped by a series of geopolitical crises, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, China’s growing global influence, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the emergence of hybrid and cyber threats.