Experts speaking at a panel in Washington on Thursday said Türkiye’s growing strategic role within NATO has become increasingly significant, adding that the alliance’s upcoming summit in Ankara could help redefine NATO for a new geopolitical era.
The event, titled "The Turkish-American Alliance at the Heart of NATO's New Geopolitics," was organized by Türkiye's Directorate of Communications and the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) and moderated by Kadir Üstün, executive director of SETA in Washington.
The panel came ahead of the 2026 NATO summit scheduled for July 7-8 in Ankara, marking the second time that Türkiye will host a NATO summit following Istanbul in 2004.
Communications Director Burhanettin Duran delivered a video message at the beginning of the panel.
"In our 74-year journey with NATO, we have faced many challenges and difficulties. Each time, in keeping with the principle of mutual loyalty, we have managed to overcome these tests," Duran said.
"With its geostrategic position, military capacity and deterrence capabilities, our country has been an indispensable central state in NATO's collective defense architecture and a geopolitical balancing factor from the Cold War to the present day," he added.
Duran also said that Türkiye's hosting of the NATO heads of state and government summit on July 7-8 is highly significant in terms of reflecting the spirit of the alliance and Türkiye's weight within it.
'First steps' for new era
During the panel, Cağrı Erhan, chief advisor to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, framed the summit within a longer arc of alliance transformation.
"As during the conditions in the early 1950s, the United States and Türkiye will play the leading role for this new era of transformation," he said.
"The upcoming summit in Ankara will witness the first steps for the brilliant future ahead."
James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Türkiye and a Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute, said Türkiye has played a decisive role across every major security challenge in recent years.
"Türkiye, along with the United States, has played the decisive role in all of the huge security issues over the past few years, from Ukraine through the Caucasus, the Black Sea, the Balkans and in the Middle East," he said.
"Türkiye has done at least as much as the United States to secure the NATO realm, which extends, obviously, because it's Türkiye's borders, into the Middle East.
"This summit offers us a great opportunity, but it is only the capstone of ongoing conversations between Türkiye and the United States in a larger NATO context," he added.
Defense industrial shift
Rich Outzen, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, pointed to growth in the U.S.-Turkish defense industrial relationship.
"The new paradigm is Türkiye makes good enough stuff that there's actually U.S. companies that want to buy it," he said, citing collaboration in maritime and shipbuilding, drones and artificial intelligence.
He argued that the two countries share a capability that few NATO allies can match.
"The combination of combat experience, industrial capacity and an engineering capacity to put those things into the field is pretty hard to achieve," he said, calling the U.S. and Türkiye "the engines of real hard power deterrence and real hard power capability for the alliance."
"There's some issues with NATO cohesion, there's some issues in the bilateral relationship, but the trend is good," he added.
Roger Kangas, an advisory board member at the Caspian Policy Center, said the Ankara summit could help NATO shed what he called "unintentional baggage" about its global role and refocus on core capabilities.
He suggested that Türkiye may need to serve as a bridge between diverging allies.
"Türkiye may have to be the responsible adult in the room and bring some of these warring parties together ... and have them come to an agreement on how the organization can move forward," he said.