Five NATO flash points as Trump meets anxious allies in Turkey

President Trump and other world leaders will confront a number of key issues facing NATO during the group’s tension-filled summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week.

Trump’s pressure campaign to get other NATO member countries to up their defense spending will likely be top of mind, along with the future of U.S. troop commitments in Europe and collective support for Ukraine.

The alliance will also be watching Trump closely for signals on whether the U.S. will allow Turkey back into its F-35 fighter jet program or lift remaining sanctions on Syria.

Here are five flash points in this week’s NATO summit:

Potential U.S. sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pushing against Trump’s apparent momentum toward reversing his first-term ban on selling F-35 fighter jets to Turkey.

Trump told reporters during a bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that he had no concerns about selling the jets to Turkey, adding he planned to lift sanctions blocking the weapons transfer.

However, critics in Congress warn Ankara could share the technology with U.S. adversaries Russia and China, also pointing out that Turkey has not met the criteria for having the sanctions lifted — including its continued use of Russian S-400 missile defense systems.

Congress blocked any transfer of the F-35 to Turkey so long as it possesses the Russian system, a condition codified in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. The administration can issue a waiver by confirming with lawmakers that Turkey does not possess the Russian military equipment.

The potential move is being met with resistance from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, as well as Israel.

“We write today to express deep concern about any effort to sell F-35s to Turkey,” a group of bipartisan lawmakers wrote to Trump on July 2.

“With President Erdogan’s continued aggression toward our greatest partners along with his troubling defense partnerships with our adversaries, it is not in the best interest of our country to sell them F-35s,” they continued.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled his concern to Trump during a Fox News interview on Sunday.

“The other thing I’d like to say, because we’re on the verge of the president’s going to Turkey … I don’t think they should be given F-35s or the engines for their fighter jets,” Netanyahu said.

Patriot air defense systems for Ukraine

Ukraine’s request to the U.S. and European countries to supply its military with patriot missiles grew more urgent on Sunday following a massive Russian attack on Kyiv.

“Our warriors performed well today in intercepting drones and cruise missiles, but unfortunately not Russian ballistic missiles,” Zelensky said on Monday following the attack, which included 68 missiles and 351 attack drones.

“And the reason lies in the insufficient supply of interceptor missiles,” the Ukrainian leader said.

Zelensky has asked in recent weeks for U.S. permission to domestically produce Patriot missiles, which are manufactured by the American defense contractor Raytheon.

Finnish President Alexander Stubb urged fellow NATO countries to provide more patriot missiles for Ukraine during an interview on Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.

Trump is set to meet with Zelensky in a bilateral meeting at the summit just weeks after they met at the Group of Seven (G7) summit in France.

The U.S. president told reporters on Tuesday that he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that he believes the two leaders want to make a deal to end the war. However, he did not offer any sign of new concessions by either side in stalled negotiations.

Path to 5 percent spending target

Trump since his first term has pressed for NATO countries to hit a defense spending goal of 5 percent of each country’s total gross domestic product (GDP), despite the alliance agreeing on a 3.5 percent mark by 2035.

Just five of the 32 NATO members are projected to meet the 3.5 percent goal this year — a figure set at a summit in The Hague last year, up from the previous goal of 2 percent — according to updated alliance data published before the summit.

To hit the 5 percent insisted on by Trump, member countries have agreed to invest another 1.5 percent on defense-adjacent issues, including cybersecurity and infrastructure to fortify roads and bridges for potential military use, also by 2035.

To highlight the increased spending, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Tuesday touted defense deals signed between NATO countries and defense contractors at the summit worth “literally billions of dollars.”

Rutte said allies were unveiling “new major projects,” to invest in security and boost economies, including a plan for NATO to procure five “high-end, high-altitude and long-endurance uncrewed aircraft” from Northrop Grumman. Another $40 billion would go toward investments in drone capabilities over the next five years, according to a NATO statement.

Trump has repeatedly called on NATO countries to “pay their fair share,” as the U.S. in 2025 made up nearly 62 percent of the alliance’s total spending.

Most members have made significant strides in upping their defense dollars in recent years, with all countries hitting the 2 percent mark for the first time last year.

The increase has largely been spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with nearby Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia surpassing the U.S. in the percentage of its GDP spent on defense. Washington’s defense spending was about 3.2 percent of GDP as of 2025.

U.S. troop commitments in question

Trump warned Tuesday that he could pull all U.S. troops from Europe if Denmark, a NATO ally, does not give up control of Greenland.

“With all the money we spend to help them with Russia … we don’t have to spend any money. We could remove all of our soldiers out of Europe,” the president said alongside Erdoğan.

The remarks resurfaced concerns over the U.S. long-term commitment to NATO and highlighted Trump’s apparent efforts to use American troops as leverage over the alliance.

There are around 80,000 U.S. service members scattered across Europe, which has reinforced NATO’s deterrence for years.

Trump, who has criticized European allies in what he viewed as insufficient support during U.S. kinetic operations against Iran, withdrew about 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany earlier this year.

In May, the Pentagon paused the deployment of an Army brigade — made up of about 4,000 soldiers — to Poland. The decision sparked bipartisan blowback from lawmakers and, later that month, Trump announced the U.S. will send some 5,000 service members to the Central European country.

On Monday, Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said the rotation of U.S. service members will come to Poland in the “coming weeks.”

Syria sanctions

Trump is expected to meet with Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa on the sidelines of the NATO summit.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has urged Trump to remove Syria from the list of state sponsors of terrorism (SST), one of the last remaining hurdles for Syria to rejoin the international community after a stunning overthrow of the country’s long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

Trump on Tuesday credited Erdoğan with building ties between Washington and Damascus. Congress has come out supporting al-Sharaa despite his past designation as a global terrorist. In December, Congress advanced legislation repealing the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, a comprehensive sanctions package imposed to financially choke the Assad regime.

Some members of Congress, though, remain skeptical of the new regime in Syria, and it’s not clear if the president is prioritizing lifting the remaining sanctions. While welcomed among the international community, Al-Sharaa is facing instability at home, underscored by a bomb attack in Damascus on Tuesday while French President Emmanuel Macron was visiting the country.

A State Department official told The Hill on Tuesday that the SST designation for Syria is under review.

“There are a number of steps that would need to be taken by both the Department and the president before the SST designation could be removed,” the official said without elaborating and added that there’s no timeline to share at the moment.