Trump praises Erdoğan, calls NATO summit successful

ANKARA

U.S. President Donald Trump on July 8 praised President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and described the NATO summit in Ankara as “very successful” as the two-day gathering came to an end.

“We just concluded a very successful NATO summit here in Türkiye,” Trump told reporters in the Turkish capital.

Trump thanked Erdoğan for hosting the summit and called the Turkish president “a great leader.”

“I want to thank President Erdoğan, who’s really a great man,” Trump said. “He’s a friend of mine, been a friend of mine for a long time.”

“He’s a strong person, a very strong personality, and that’s why he runs such a successful and good country,” he added.

The summit brought together leaders of NATO’s 32 member states and key partners to discuss Europe’s defense capacity, alliance spending targets, military modernization and continued support for Ukraine.

Trump said leaders discussed the alliance’s target of spending 5 percent of gross domestic product on defense and security-related areas, a benchmark agreed at last year’s NATO summit in The Hague.

He said defense spending by other NATO members had increased by nearly $150 billion in 2025.

“In the working session this morning, we discussed the progress other members are making toward the 5 percent target,” Trump said. “Some have truly answered the call, and others are making big changes.”

Trump urged allies to move faster toward the target, saying the benchmark “should have been” at that level for years.

“There was tremendous unity in the summit,” he said, again calling the Ankara meeting “tremendously successful.”

Trump also defended his handling of the conflict with Iran when asked why he had not been able to end the war.

“The Iran war has been a tremendous military success,” he said. “They’re not going to have a nuclear weapon.”