NATO Summit in Ankara: Trump Pushes Greenland Claim, Offers Ukraine Patriot Licenses, and Lifts Turkey Sanctions

What Happened in Ankara

President Trump arrived at the NATO summit in Turkey Tuesday having already signaled he nearly skipped it entirely, telling reporters he attended largely because of his personal relationship with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to the Indian Express. He used the platform to push three separate and consequential policy positions in a single day.

Greenland: The Strategic Case and the Alliance Problem

Trump renewed his demand that the United States, not Denmark, should control Greenland. Speaking alongside Erdogan, he argued that Washington effectively took responsibility for the island during World War II after Nazi Germany overran Denmark in less than a day, and that handing it back afterward was a mistake.

"That should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark," Trump told reporters, according to PBS and the Indian Express.

The strategic logic is not invented. Pituffik Space Base — formerly Thule Air Base — sits on Greenland's northwest coast and hosts radar systems tied directly to America's missile early-warning network, supporting both Space Command and NORAD operations, as the Daily Wire noted. Greenland also sits atop some of the world's largest known rare earth mineral deposits, resources critical to defense manufacturing and consumer electronics that China currently dominates in production and refining.

Trump also repeated a claim PBS described as false: that Greenland is surrounded by Chinese and Russian ships.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, speaking at the same summit, was unambiguous. Greenland is off the table. She said Denmark expects NATO allies to respect Greenlandic self-determination and Danish sovereignty, and confirmed Denmark stands ready to defend every part of its territory, according to the Daily Wire.

NATO's founding principle is that members defend each other's territory, not threaten to take it. Trump's Greenland push, regardless of its strategic rationale, puts the U.S. in the position of pressuring an ally over land it has no legal claim to. There is no indication Denmark has offered to negotiate, no treaty process underway, and no mechanism by which the U.S. could acquire Greenland without Greenlandic and Danish consent.

Ukraine: Patriot Licenses and a Shift in Tone

In a development that drew more immediate attention from European observers, Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the U.S. would grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot air-defense missiles domestically.

"We'll give them the right to make Patriots," Trump said ahead of a closed-door meeting with Zelensky, according to the New York Post. He estimated Ukraine could have production running by fall 2026, and said the manufacturer is currently building four new plants.

The timing matters. Patriot missiles have been critically short for months, and according to the New York Post, the shortage has forced Ukraine in recent days to allow Russian missiles to strike Kyiv without interception.

The Guardian's live coverage of the summit described the Zelensky briefing as broadly positive for Ukraine, noting Trump also backed Kyiv's right to strike inside Russia, offered strong security guarantee language for any future peace deal, and expressed interest in purchasing Ukrainian drones for the U.S. military. This represents a turnaround from even a year ago. The Guardian's correspondent noted Trump's framing of the war as two sides fighting "like kids in a park" as a troubling equivalence between aggressor and victim, a fair criticism of language that blurs the distinction between Russia's invasion and Ukraine's defense.

The Guardian's framing was notably warmer toward Trump's Ukraine posture than its typical coverage, while acknowledging the caveats. This reflects how substantially the tone in Ankara differed from earlier Trump-Zelensky interactions, including the February 2025 Oval Office confrontation.

Turkey: Sanctions Lifted, F-35s Potentially Back on the Table

The summit's third major development: Trump announced the U.S. will lift Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) sanctions on Turkey, imposed in 2020 after Ankara purchased Russia's S-400 missile defense system and was removed from the F-35 program.

Trump said Secretaries Rubio, Bessent, and Hegseth are working the process, according to PBS. He also said F-35 sales to Turkey are "something certainly we'd consider."

Erdogan greeted Trump with a military ceremony including troops on horseback and jets trailing red, white, and blue smoke. Trump called the relationship a "chemistry that works."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already told Trump he opposes F-35 sales to Turkey, according to PBS, and legal hurdles remain before Turkey could formally re-enter the program even with sanctions removed. Whether lifted sanctions translate into actual F-35 transfers is an open question.

Critics of the Turkey decision argue it rewards Erdogan for purchasing Russian weapons without extracting meaningful concessions on NATO cohesion. Supporters argue keeping Turkey inside the alliance tent, given its geography controlling the Bosphorus and its border with both Russia and the Middle East, is worth the diplomatic flexibility. Both positions have merit and neither has been settled by this announcement.

NATO Spending and the Iran Grievance

Trump also arrived angry. He told reporters he had been considering skipping the summit and accused Britain, France, Germany, and Italy of refusing to support the United States during the Iran conflict, describing it as a failure after Washington had invested "trillions of dollars" in the alliance, according to the Indian Express. He said the U.S. neither wanted nor needed their military help, but the grievance was clearly real.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and European member states were simultaneously announcing billions in new arms deals and defense commitments, a direct attempt to address Trump's longstanding complaint that allies don't pay their share, PBS reported.

Whether the Patriot licensing deal for Ukraine, the Turkey sanctions lift, and the defense spending announcements are enough to leave Ankara with a strengthened alliance or a more fractured one remains unresolved. The next concrete test is whether Ukraine can actually stand up Patriot manufacturing by fall, and whether the promised U.S. licensing transfer moves through the necessary legal and industrial channels to get there.