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Istanbul, Turkiye: Ankara hopes its hosting of an upcoming NATO summit will cement its rise as a key European security partner, building on the rapid growth of its defence industry despite resistance from some allies.
The two-day summit opens on Tuesday with the Defence Industry Forum -- once a sideline event, now formally part of the programme -- at which some 3,500 companies will be showcasing the best of Turkiye's burgeoning defence technologies.
"It is inconceivable to establish European security without Turkiye," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said while pushing relentlessly for Turkiye's "inclusion" in all of Europe's defence and security structures, notably the EU's 150-billion-euro ($176-billion) SAFE programme.
Turkiye boasts NATO's second-biggest army after the United States with 355,000 troops and another 378,000 reservists, with its defence industry notably booming over the past decade.
But its desire to switch from supplier to a strategic partner has been held in check.
"Turkiye has been largely left out of Europe-wide programmes and projects. That is what Turkiye wants to change... And to do that, it will use the summit to showcase its capabilities," said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, head of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara.
Turkiye's defence industry -- which ranks 11th in the world, accounting for 1.8 percent of the global arms market, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) -- saw exports grow by 48 percent in 2025, up from 29 percent a year earlier, officials said.
"We now achieve in one week what we used to achieve in one year," Erdogan said last month of Turkiye's exports of drones, tanks, armoured vehicles and warships, one of which was delivered to Romania, becoming "the first export of a military ship to an EU and NATO member country".
'Detoxification'
"We do not want to be seen only as a supplier. We want to be regarded as a strategic partner.. (for) joint production and technology cooperation," Haluk Gorgun, head of Turkiye's SSB Defence Industry Agency told Defence24 news website last month.
But allies are questioning Ankara's long-term reliability with European technology.
"They are asking because of Turkiye's track record with Russia," said Unluhisarcikli, referring to Ankara's 2017 acquisition of a Russian S?400 air-defence system that alarmed its NATO partners.
"This is what Turkiye needs to persuade France, Italy and Germany about."
Ties soured in 2015 with Turkiye's military operations in Syria and Libya, then worsened over tensions with Greece and Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean.
Although the relationship has entered a process of "detoxification", helped by Turkiye's support for Kyiv, the S-400 issue has remained a stumbling block, notably with Washington, with Ankara struggling to find a way to offload the offending system.
Today Turkiye's relationship with the UK and a handful of European nations is working, but "it's not working with the European Union as a whole because there are a couple of members who are blocking it," explained Professor Mustafa Aydin, an international relations expert at Istanbul's Kadir Has University.
