NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said next week’s NATO summit in Ankara should focus on putting last year’s defense-spending pledges into practice and increasing weapons production, while describing Turkey as an important military and industrial power within the alliance.
Speaking to the state-run Anadolu news agency ahead of the July 7-8 summit, Rutte said the meeting should be a “summit of delivery and implementation,” with three main priorities: higher defense spending, continued support for Ukraine and faster defense production.
The summit will be held at the presidential complex in Ankara and will bring together leaders from NATO’s 32 member states.
It will be Turkey’s second time hosting a NATO summit, with the first held in 2004 in İstanbul.
The summit comes a year after NATO leaders agreed at their 2025 summit in The Hague to raise annual defense and security-related spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product by 2035.
The pledge includes at least 3.5 percent of GDP for core defense needs and up to 1.5 percent for areas such as critical infrastructure, cyber defense, civil preparedness and strengthening the defense industry.
🎙️ In an interview with Anadolu, NATO chief Mark Rutte says next week’s NATO summit in Ankara should be a ‘summit of delivery and implementation,’ with defense spending, support for Ukraine, and defense industrial production among the alliance’s top priorities
🔹 Rutte says the… pic.twitter.com/jZ0l25RpdP
— Anadolu English (@anadoluagency) July 1, 2026
Rutte told Anadolu that European allies and Canada had committed nearly $250 billion in additional defense spending over the past two years.
The increase is already visible in NATO’s figures. In March the alliance said European members and Canada spent $574 billion on defense in 2025, a 20 percent increase in real terms from 2024.
But Rutte said bigger budgets would not be enough unless NATO members could also produce weapons, ammunition and other military equipment more quickly.
“We need to really ramp up the defense industrial production because it is an integral part of our deterrence,” Rutte said, adding that production timelines remain too long and output is still not sufficient.
NATO’s Defense Industry Forum will also be held in Ankara on July 7, the opening day of the summit. NATO describes the forum as its main high-level event on defense production, investment and innovation.
Rutte said defense production could become one of the summit’s main issues.
“Things generally are getting better, but I think from these three priorities that one might come out as one of the biggest,” he said, referring to defense industry output.
Rutte also praised Turkey’s role in NATO, pointing to its military capacity and defense industry.
“Turkey is extremely important to NATO,” he said, noting that the country has been a member of the alliance since 1952.
“You are one of the strongest militaries in the alliance,” he added. “It is extremely well equipped, extremely well trained.”
Turkey has NATO’s second-largest army after the United States and has become an increasingly visible defense producer in recent years, with armed drones, armored vehicles, naval platforms, missiles and electronic systems sold to a growing number of countries.
Rutte said Turkey has around 3,000 defense contractors, ranging from large companies to smaller technology firms, and said the country had shown an ability to use new technologies and apply lessons from the war in Ukraine.
He said that was one reason NATO wanted to hold the defense industry forum in Ankara.
“We were absolutely adamant about organizing this defense industrial forum in Ankara,” Rutte said, adding that Turkey was a natural place to showcase both its own defense sector and NATO’s industrial base.
Turkey’s defense and aviation exports reached $10.05 billion in 2025, up 48 percent from 2024, according to Haluk Görgün, head of the Presidency of Defense Industries. Turkish officials said the total included $9.87 billion in goods exports and $184 million in services.
The increase has strengthened Ankara’s claim that its defense sector should have a larger role in NATO procurement and joint production.
Figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which tracks transfers of major weapons, also show Turkey’s growing place in the global arms market.
Turkey was the world’s 11th-largest exporter of major arms in 2020-2024, with exports up 103 percent compared with 2015-2019. Its share of global arms exports rose from 0.8 percent to 1.7 percent over the same period.
SIPRI’s military expenditure database also put Turkey’s military spending at 1.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2024, close to NATO’s previous 2 percent target, although NATO’s own estimates have put Turkey slightly above that level.
Rutte also praised Turkish defense contractor ASELSAN and said Turkey had expanded defense industry cooperation with European countries and the United States.
His remarks come as Ankara is seeking fewer restrictions on its defense sector and deeper industrial cooperation with NATO allies.
Turkey has long complained about formal and informal restrictions on defense exports to Turkey by some NATO members.
The issue became more serious after Ankara bought Russian S-400 missile defense systems, leading Washington to remove Turkey from the F-35 fighter jet program in 2019.
Relations have improved in some areas since then. The United States approved a $23 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets and modernization kits to Turkey in 2024 after Ankara ratified Sweden’s NATO membership.
In a recent development Washington is also moving ahead with a planned sale of General Electric F110 engines for Turkey’s KAAN fighter jet program, a deal worth more than $700 million. The engines are needed for the early production phase of KAAN, Turkey’s domestically developed fighter jet, although Ankara is also working on a locally produced engine.
Still, Turkey’s ties with NATO allies remain complicated. Ankara has supported Ukraine militarily, including through the sale of Bayraktar drones, while also keeping channels open with Russia and declining to join Western sanctions on Moscow.
Rutte said NATO must keep supporting Ukraine while building a stronger defense industry across the alliance.
He described the effort as part of building what he called “NATO 3.0,” referring to a stronger alliance with higher defense spending, faster weapons production and a larger European role in deterrence.
NATO wants members to produce weapons faster because Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown how quickly armies can run short of ammunition, air defense systems, drones and spare parts.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has depended heavily on Western weapons, while NATO countries have had to replace the equipment they sent to Kyiv.