Donald Trump heads to Ankara, Turkey, on Monday evening for the annual NATO summit, where Trump demands NATO defence spending will be the central pressure point. Last year, Trump pushed alliance allies to spend more on defense. This week, Trump is trying to turn those pledges into action.
Mark Rutte’s White House meeting
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on Wednesday, June 24, 2026. That meeting sits between last year’s push for higher spending and the Ankara trip now aimed at enforcing it. For allies, the move signals that promises made in one summit are being carried into the next one as a live test, not treated as a ceremonial line in a joint statement.
Trump’s own spending push
The complication is that Trump is trying to enforce pledges he previously pressed allies to make. That means the same leader who argued for higher defense spending last year is now arriving in Turkey to demand that NATO members treat those commitments as binding political obligations rather than optional targets.
The exact steps Trump plans to use at the annual NATO summit are not spelled out in the available facts. What is clear is the setting: Ankara, Turkey, on Monday evening, with Trump using the summit to keep defense spending at the center of the alliance’s agenda.
From The Hague to Ankara
Trump’s latest move follows a run of high-level appearances that show how often he has used alliance and diplomatic meetings to press his position. He spoke during a media conference at the end of the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25, 2025. He also shook hands with Syria’s President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the White House in Washington on Monday, Nov. 10, 2025, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the G7 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France, on Tuesday, June 16, 2026.
For NATO members, the practical issue is no longer whether the spending pledge exists; it is whether Trump can make the alliance treat it as a deadline with political consequences. The summit in Ankara is where that test begins, with Trump arriving as both the author of the pressure and the official now expected to enforce it.
