Trump Heads to Ankara for NATO Summit Carrying F-35 Offer and 'Gift Bag' for Erdogan

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - President Donald Trump is heading to Ankara next week for the NATO summit on July 7 and 8, 2026, becoming the first sitting US president to visit Türkiye since Barack Obama did so in 2015, and he is arriving with what those close to the matter are already calling a significant "gift bag" for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with F-35 fighter jets, F-110 jet engines, and hundreds of millions of dollars in defense deals all under active consideration.

When a reporter asked Trump during a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte last week whether he was bringing "a big gift bag for Erdogan," the president confirmed the premise directly. "Yeah, I think so," Trump responded. "Yeah, I'm going to probably do something that's going to make him very happy."

Trump was equally candid about the personal dimension of the visit. "I would not have gone for most people," he told reporters. "But he called me up. He said: 'Please, I have it in Turkey. You got to be there. The United States has to be in there.' And so I'm going out of respect to President Erdogan." The president has repeatedly praised Erdogan, calling him "a hell of a leader" and a good friend.

The F-35 Ban That Has Lasted Six Years

At the center of the anticipated package is a potential reversal of the ban on F-35 fighter jet sales to Türkiye, a restriction Washington imposed in 2019 after Ankara purchased the Russian-made S-400 air defense system. US officials have maintained that Türkiye's use of the Russian system could enable Moscow to gather intelligence on the F-35's advanced stealth capabilities, posing an unacceptable risk to the aircraft and to the broader NATO defense architecture.

Türkiye had been a formal partner in the F-35 programme before its exclusion, with Turkish manufacturers producing components for the aircraft. The ban has been a persistent source of bilateral tension for six years. As the Associated Press reported on Thursday, July 3, 2026, Vice President JD Vance said at a recent Oval Office meeting that Washington was exploring ways to sell Türkiye the jets, emphasizing that any sale would require confirming that Türkiye has complied with US law. Trump had also suggested as recently as September 2025 that F-35 sales to Türkiye could resume soon.

Congressional Opposition Significant but Being Bypassed

The F-35 and engine package faces substantial resistance on Capitol Hill. As the Associated Press confirmed on Thursday, there is significant bipartisan opposition in Congress to selling F-35s to Türkiye as long as Ankara remains in possession of the S-400 systems, including from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch of Idaho, an influential Republican. New York Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement last week that "in this case, the State Department did not even attempt to justify its decision" to bypass congressional opposition on the engine sales.

Despite that resistance, the State Department last week sent key lawmakers a formal notification that it planned to bypass congressional opposition to more than $700 million in F-110 jet engine sales to Ankara, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the nonpublic notification, as the Associated Press reported on Thursday.

F-110 Engines for the KAAN Fighter

The F-110 jet engines Türkiye is seeking would power its domestically produced KAAN fighter jet, a flagship project of Ankara's defence industry programme developed by Turkish Aerospace Industries. The KAAN has faced a critical gap in engine supply that has limited its development, and the provision of American F-110 engines would represent a transformative injection of capability into Türkiye's independent defence manufacturing ambitions.

Erdogan Using the Summit as a Stage

The Council on Foreign Relations observed on Wednesday that Erdogan intends to use the summit as a platform to elevate his international standing at a moment of significant domestic political pressure, presenting himself as "the indispensable ally" to European partners and a valued friend to Washington. The CFR analysis noted that Trump has twice previously withdrawn US troops from the Syria-Türkiye border, effectively endorsing Turkish military interventions that displaced more than 180,000 Kurds, and was quick to embrace Syria's new leadership after the fall of Assad, a development that also benefited Ankara.

Philip Gordon, who served as national security adviser for Vice President Kamala Harris and is now at the Brookings Institution, told the Associated Press that Trump's relationship with Erdogan follows a recognizable pattern. "It has often been pointed out that he seems to have better relationships with adversaries and autocrats, and he certainly says nicer things about them than with allies," Gordon said. "Erdogan is taking full advantage of it."

A Summit With Strategic Weight Beyond the Gift Bag

The July 7-8 Ankara summit takes place at a moment of acute strategic significance for NATO. European members have dramatically accelerated their own defence spending, with NATO allies in Europe and Canada investing a combined $574 billion in 2025, a 20 percent increase in real terms over 2024, according to Deutsche Welle. At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, member states committed to increasing defence spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035.

The summit also follows Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth's launch of a sweeping six-month review of America's military presence in Europe, announced at NATO headquarters in Brussels on June 18, 2026, a review that European allies are watching closely as they assess Washington's long-term commitment to the continent's security.

Türkiye, as NATO's second-largest military by personnel and its only member sharing a border with both the Middle East and the Black Sea region, occupies a position of unique strategic leverage within the alliance, one that Trump appears determined to reward in ways that will reverberate well beyond the summit itself.