As President Donald Trump travels to Ankara for the upcoming NATO summit, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has positioned himself as the alliance's indispensable dealmaker — a role built less on fixed ideology than on two decades of calculated reinvention. Trump has publicly called Erdoğan "a friend" and "a respected leader," signaling that a partnership once fractured by Turkey's purchase of Russian military hardware is being actively rehabilitated.
From S-400 Pariah to Strategic Linchpin
The central unresolved dispute between Washington and Ankara remains Turkey's 2019 delivery of the Russian S-400 missile defense system. That purchase triggered Turkey's expulsion from the F-35 fighter jet program and U.S. sanctions on Turkey's defense procurement agency. Former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey told Fox News Digital that restoring Turkey to the F-35 program is "a different issue" — technically complicated, not merely political — because operating the Russian-made system alongside America's most advanced stealth fighter could expose sensitive U.S. technology.
Yet the strategic math has shifted sharply since then. Turkey controls the Bosporus and Dardanelles under the 1936 Montreux Convention, fields NATO's second-largest military, and has been central to the Black Sea contest since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Jeffrey argued Turkey has been "essential to Ukraine staying in the fight," pointing to its enforcement of the Montreux Convention, its early delivery of Bayraktar drones to Kyiv, and its mediation role between Moscow and Kyiv. "You can't contain Russia in the Black Sea without Turkey," he said.
The Ideology-Free Strongman
Gönül Tol, founding director of the Middle East Institute's Turkey Program and author of "Erdoğan's War: A Strongman's Struggle at Home and in Syria," locates Erdoğan's durability in a single organizing principle: remaining in power. "He's not an ideological man," Tol told Fox News Digital. "He's very pragmatic, first and foremost a populist."
The record supports that diagnosis. Erdoğan entered politics through the Islamist National Outlook movement under Necmettin Erbakan and served as Istanbul's mayor on the Welfare Party ticket. He then founded the Justice and Development Party — the AKP — in 2001 and rebranded as a "conservative democrat" chasing European Union membership. After consolidating power he pivoted to political Islam following the Arab Spring in 2011, then shifted again to Turkish nationalism when regional ambitions faltered, and now courts Washington. "Everything is designed to keep him in power," Tol said. "Beyond that, I don't see a binding ideology."
Democratic Backsliding as the Cost of Alliance Value
NATO allies have grown quieter on Turkey's rights record as Ankara's strategic weight has risen. Freedom House has labeled Erdoğan "increasingly authoritarian," citing constitutional changes and the systematic imprisonment of political opponents, independent journalists, and civil society figures. Human Rights Watch documented nationwide protests triggered by the 2026 arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, whose opposition party had posted a strong result in the 2024 municipal elections. Turkey's prison population exceeded 420,000 against an official capacity of roughly 304,000, according to a June 2026 report drawing on Turkish Justice Ministry figures.
Former U.S. Ambassador David Satterfield has argued it remains important for the West to speak publicly about the "degradation of democratic institutions in Turkey." Tol estimates Erdoğan retains genuine support from roughly 35% of the population — a base cemented by patronage networks, restored prestige for religious conservatives, and a foreign policy that has, whatever its contradictions, made Turkey impossible to sideline.