The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Leaders’ Summit, to be held in Ankara on July 7-8, has the potential to be a turning point where the security architecture shaped after the Cold War is redefined and the global balance of power is significantly reshaped. The contemporary international system is undergoing a transition where the relative supremacy of the unipolar order is diminishing, while multipolar competition and inter-block strategic struggles are increasingly institutionalizing. In this context, the summit signifies a historical turning point where the international security architecture is being reshaped, beyond merely being a diplomatic platform for making decisions about NATO’s future.
To better understand this transformation, it is necessary to look at NATO’s historical development process. The evolution of the Alliance from its establishment to the present can be examined in three main periods.
NATO 1.0 (1949-1991) Cold War NATO: The Alliance was established in 1949 for the purpose of collective defense against the Soviet threat. In this period, when the main rival was the Warsaw Pact, the understanding of collective defense shaped by the encirclement of the Soviet Union, nuclear deterrence, the defense of Europe, and Article 5 of the Washington Treaty came to the forefront.
NATO 2.0 (1991-2022) Post-Cold War Era: Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the alliance moved beyond its classic collective defense mission to engage in new areas such as crisis management, peace support operations, counter-terrorism, Balkan interventions, the Afghanistan Operation, partnership programs, and the expansion into Eastern Europe. Thus, NATO’s area of operations has, for the first time, extended beyond the European geography.
NATO 3.0 (2022-Present) Multilayered Security Governance: This period, characterized more as an analytical conceptualization than an official NATO doctrine, represents the structural transformation that became evident following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Laid out in the 2022 Madrid Strategic Concept and deepened with the 2023 Vilnius and 2024 Washington summits, this process has defined Russia as the “most significant and direct threat” and China for the first time as a “systemic challenge.” During the same period, hybrid warfare, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, space security, combating disinformation, protecting critical infrastructure, energy and supply chain security, developing defense industry capacity, and cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners have become integral elements of NATO’s security agenda. Thus, NATO is transforming into a multi-layered security organization that encompasses not only a military alliance but also technology, economy, energy, and critical infrastructure.
In this new era of the Alliance, NATO is transitioning from a defensive structure that merely protects border lines to a new deterrence doctrine aimed at confronting all hybrid, cyber, economic, and conventional threats on a global scale. The protracted war of attrition on the Ukraine axis, the nuclear/conventional escalation scenarios in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, and the tension lines read thru the Taiwan Strait in the Asia-Pacific are no longer isolated regional crises. On the contrary, these crises are different faces of a single geopolitical front coordinated by revisionist actors to shake the global status quo. The greatest challenge the alliance faces today stems precisely from this holistic structure. For the industrial bottlenecks in conventional ammunition production, sabotage of critical underwater energy and internet infrastructure, and AI-supported cyber attacks, a comprehensive societal and industrial mobilization is required beyond the military capacities of the member countries.
Within this vast and complex global picture, international relations theories and realpolitik realities provide a clear framework for understanding the reflexes of hegemonic powers. Due to periodic crises or proxy wars in regions like the Middle East, the United States (US) sacrificing, weakening, or dismantling NATO, which is the strongest legitimacy and military power multiplier of its global hegemony, for the sake of a strategic partner, is incompatible with any rational state logic. As clearly stated by the Cost of Hegemony theory, maintaining a superpower’s global leadership; the preservation of the US dollar’s reserve currency status, the security of global maritime trade routes, and the control of the international financial architecture is only possible with the existence of broad-based, institutionalized alliance networks like NATO.
The United States’ withdrawal from this alliance or taking steps to sabotage the structure from within will create global geopolitical vacuums, which will be quickly filled by Russia on the European stage and by China on the Asia-Pacific stage. No hegemonic power would undertake such an irrational cost as to present the global leadership throne to its rivals on a silver platter. Therefore, instead of the scenario of alliances disbanding in the global system, the trend of existing alliances evolving and being fortified according to the new world order is becoming inevitable.
In this context, two fundamental strategic trends are emerging that will shape the global system and the potential outcomes of the Ankara Summit in the upcoming period. The first of these is the increasingly evident shift of the center of gravity in the U.S. global strategy toward the Indo-Pacific region. This shift is being evaluated as part of a balancing strategy against China’s rise and also entails the restructuring of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, focusing more on energy security, the protection of maritime trade routes, and the maintenance of regional stability at a minimal level. In this process, on the European continent, there is a trend toward strengthening conventional defense capacity and a greater assumption of the security burden by European allies, making the “Europeanized NATO” model more visible. This transformation indicates a process in which the sharing of responsibilities in the transatlantic security architecture is being redefined and the distribution of burdens is gradually being rebalanced.
The second fundamental trend is the global expansion of NATO’s security perspective beyond geographical boundaries. In this context, the cooperation mechanisms developed with Indo-Pacific partners such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand are not limited to the level of political dialog; they are also increasingly institutionalizing in areas such as defense technologies, cybersecurity, protection of critical infrastructures, and joint military exercises. This expansion indicates that the West-centered security architecture is striving to build a more comprehensive and multilayered deterrence structure on a global scale against the revisionist tendencies created by actors such as Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran on different fronts.
In this context, the Ankara Summit is situated at the intersection of these two strategic trends. The summit, on one hand, brings to the forefront how the increasing discussions on burden-sharing within the transatlantic alliance will be managed, while on the other hand, it serves as a critical test of how the institutional boundaries of NATO’s globally expanding security vision can be defined. In this context, the summit stands out as an important diplomatic and strategic platform where the collective strategic will and institutional cohesion capacity of the Western bloc are tested during a period that requires a more integrated approach to economic capacity, defense industry production, and military readiness.
The summit to be held in Ankara is making Türkiye’s position in the global geopolitical equation more visible by elevating it beyond being a regional actor, highlighting its significant systemic balancing role in shaping the new international order. At this pivotal moment when the alliance is transitioning to the “NATO 3.0” doctrine and fortifying a global front against the revisionist axis, Türkiye, with its geographical, military, and diplomatic capacity, is at the very center of this new architecture. Additionally, considering the war of attrition in Ukraine, the security of the Black Sea, and the geopolitics of the grain corridor, Türkiye stands out as one of the decisive actors in the stability of the northern flank of the alliance, thanks to the legal framework arising from the Montreux Convention and its strategic position. At the same time, in the context of nuclear and conventional fault lines in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, energy security, and migration management, Türkiye stands out as a significant burden-sharing actor in the strategic processes concerning NATO’s southern flank. Therefore, it does not seem possible for NATO to rationally establish either European defense or Middle Eastern and Mediterranean strategies without Türkiye.
One of the structural elements that underscores Türkiye’s importance at this summit is Ankara’s autonomous diplomatic capacity and its foreign policy approach defined as “mediator/balancer.” In a period when the Western bloc has embarked on a comprehensive economic and military mobilization and polarization has intensified, Türkiye is both portraying a loyal ally profile to NATO as its second-largest military power and is known as one of the rare actors capable of maintaining rational, multidimensional, and pragmatic relations with Russia, China, and Middle Eastern actors. This situation makes Ankara an indispensable negotiation center for resolving global crises and reopening blocked diplomatic channels. Moreover, the fact that the summit is being held in Ankara itself is the most concrete declaration of how much the alliance needs Türkiye’s approval and strategic partnership, which is the geographical and strategic intersection point of the East and West, in its strategy to open up to the Asia-Pacific and build a global front.
Finally, considering the limitations in NATO’s conventional ammunition production capacity and the need for industrial mobilization, Türkiye’s defense industry capacity, which has shown significant development in recent years, is regarded as an important contributing factor to the alliance. In the fields of unmanned technologies, ammunition production, military logistics, and defense infrastructure, Türkiye’s domestic and rapid production capabilities demonstrate that it is one of the most prepared and operational forces that can share the continent’s military burden in the “Europeanized NATO” model. In other words, Türkiye is not just a host country at the Ankara Summit; it is both the architect and the most critical carrier of the new global deterrence wall, capable of filling the gap between the transatlantic alliance’s global goals and the geopolitical realities on the ground. Therefore, Türkiye’s strategic choices and bargaining power in this process will directly determine the boundaries of the Western bloc and the degree of superiority it will establish over its rivals in the new world order.
In summary, the NATO Leaders Summit to be held in Ankara is of critical importance in the alliance’s post-Cold War transformation process and reveals that the understanding of security, within the framework of NATO’s evolution from 1.0 to 3.0, is based not only on military capacity but also on the holistic dynamics of hybrid threats, technological competition, and global geopolitical rivalry. In this context, the Ukraine War, the deepening power competition in the Asia-Pacific, and the instabilities in the Middle East are transforming from independent regional crises into a globally integrated arena of strategic competition. This transformation necessitates NATO evolving beyond its classical defense alliance identity into a multi-layered security organization that includes economic resilience, technological capacity, and industrial mobilization.
The shift of the U.S. strategic priorities to the Indo-Pacific and the rebalancing of Europe’s defense burden are making the sharing of responsibilities within the alliance more critical. In this context, Türkiye stands out as a structural balancing element in NATO’s transformation process with its geostrategic position, military capacity, diplomatic flexibility, and developing defense industry. Especially Türkiye, thru the roles it undertakes in a wide geography extending from the Black Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, from the Middle East to European security, is becoming not only an ally but also one of the decisive actors in the new architecture of the alliance.
In short, the Ankara Summit is a critical turning point that, beyond being a platform where NATO’s future strategic orientations will be shaped, determines the direction in which the international security architecture will evolve during this transitional period of global power realignment. Türkiye’s position in this process demonstrates its potential to influence both the balance within the alliance and the overall direction of the global security architecture.
