On the morning of 8 May 2026, Czech President Petr Pavel sat down with Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in Prague for what was meant to be a brief coordination meeting . The subject: who would represent the Czech Republic at the NATO summit scheduled for Ankara two months hence. The conversation did not go well. Pavel wanted to lead the delegation; Babiš disagreed . What followed was not diplomacy but brinkmanship. Pavel emerged from the meeting and publicly declared his intent: either both men would announce they were attending together, or he would file a constitutional lawsuit to settle the matter . Days later, he made good on the threat, lodging a jurisdictional complaint with the Constitutional Court . "Macinka," Pavel said tartly, referring to a government official, "will not decide whether I go to the NATO summit" .
By June, the Czech government had reached its verdict: Pavel would not be part of the delegation . The president, undeterred, announced he would attend regardless—"on his own," if necessary . It was an extraordinary rupture, a head-of-state defying his own government over a summit attendance list. But it was also something more: a miniature of the larger crisis gathering around the Alliance itself as it prepared to convene in Ankara on 7–8 July 2026 .
The Second Coming
Ankara has hosted a NATO summit once before, and the choice to return carries weight . Turkey—Türkiye, as Ankara now insists—sits at the hinge of Europe and Asia, a geography that has always made it both indispensable and unsettling to its Western allies. This time, the location feels less like a courtesy than a statement. The summit is being organised under the tenure of Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister endorsed by the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany to become NATO's next secretary-general . Rutte is inheriting an alliance in the midst of an identity crisis, and Ankara—poised between continents, between the Atlantic idea and something newer—seems an apt venue for the reckoning.
Rutte himself travelled to Turkey in the weeks before the summit for two days of meetings with Turkish officials, a diplomatic overture meant to smooth the ground . But smoothness is in short supply. The question of who gets to sit in the room has become as contested as the agenda itself. NATO, for most of its history, was a relatively simple proposition: a defensive pact among North Atlantic democracies, aimed at a single adversary. That adversary is gone, or at least transformed, and the alliance has spent the past three decades searching for a new organising principle. Ankara may be where that search reaches an impasse.
The Guest List Wars
The most visible fault line runs through the summit's invitation list. Turkey has pushed to invite the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand—the so-called Indo-Pacific partners—arguing that NATO's strategic horizon must extend beyond the Euro-Atlantic theatre . It is a vision of the Alliance as a global coalition, a network binding democracies across hemispheres. But the United States is urging member states not to extend those invitations . Washington's position is blunt: representatives from Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan should not attend the July summit in Ankara.
The dispute is not merely procedural. It goes to the heart of what NATO is for. If the Alliance expands its aperture to the Pacific, it risks becoming a general-purpose vehicle for containing China—a role that would dilute its European focus and entangle it in conflicts far from the North Atlantic. If it refuses, it risks obsolescence, clinging to Cold War borders in a world where threats are networked and geography is fungible. Rutte has tried to finesse the issue, saying publicly that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will attend the summit —a gesture toward inclusivity that sidesteps the broader question of the Indo-Pacific four. Zelenskyy's invitation is itself significant; NATO has invited him , a symbolic acknowledgment of Ukraine's place in the Alliance's future, even if formal membership remains a distant prospect.
Yet even this has not settled matters. The sources reveal a fundamental split: Turkey wants a wider tent; the United States wants tighter control. And the European members, caught between the two, are beginning to articulate a third position altogether.
The Fraying Umbrella
Rob Jetten, the Dutch prime minister, delivered that position with unusual candour in recent remarks . Europe, he said, must stop relying on the United States for its defence and take more responsibility for its own security. It was a stark break from decades of transatlantic orthodoxy, the kind of statement that would once have been reserved for academic journals or off-the-record briefings. Now it is being said aloud, by a NATO member in good standing, as the Alliance gathers for its most important meeting in years.
Jetten's comment was prompted, in part, by the behaviour of the current American administration. President Donald Trump has ruled out using military force to acquire Greenland —a sentence that, in any other era, would read as satire. But the mere fact that such a clarification was necessary speaks to the atmosphere. More consequentially, Trump has criticised NATO allies for refusing to participate in a recent US military operation against Iran . The details of that operation remain opaque, but the criticism itself is clear: America expects solidarity, and when it does not receive it, the President of the United States says so publicly, in terms that carry an implicit threat.
This is the context in which Europe is beginning to contemplate what was once unthinkable: a security architecture that does not assume American commitment. Jetten called it "naïve" to shelter under the US security umbrella , a word that cuts both ways. It indicts European complacency, but also American reliability. The Ankara summit, then, is not only about who attends or what gets discussed. It is about whether the assumptions that have held NATO together for 75 years still obtain—and what comes next if they do not.
The Czech Fracture
The dispute in Prague, meanwhile, has taken on a life of its own. Petr Pavel, the Czech president, is a former NATO general, a man whose career was built within the Alliance's command structure. For him, attending the Ankara summit is not a protocol question but a matter of identity. Andrej Babiš, the prime minister, sees it differently. The two men met in May and failed to agree on who should represent the Czech Republic . Pavel proposed a joint announcement—both would attend, a show of unity—but made clear that if Babiš refused, he would take the matter to court . When Babiš did refuse, Pavel filed the lawsuit .
The government's decision followed in June: Pavel would not be part of the official delegation . But Pavel has insisted he will go anyway, without government sanction if necessary . It is unclear what this means in practice—whether he will sit in the hall as an observer, whether he will hold bilateral meetings, whether his presence will be acknowledged at all. What is clear is that the dispute has exposed a deeper rift, not only between two men but between two visions of the Czech role in NATO. Pavel represents the Atlanticist tradition, the belief that membership in the Alliance is the cornerstone of Czech security and identity. Babiš, a populist businessman, is more sceptical of supranational commitments, more inclined to see NATO as one option among many.
This is not a uniquely Czech problem. Across Europe, the tension between Atlanticism and sovereignty, between collective defence and national interest, is growing sharper. The Ankara summit will not resolve it, but it will make it visible.
What Is NATO For?
The formal agenda for 7–8 July remains, to a large extent, behind closed doors . But the unofficial agenda is plain enough. The Alliance is being asked to answer a question it has avoided for decades: what is NATO for, in a world where the Soviet Union is gone, where America is unreliable, where the threats are as likely to come from cyber-attacks or climate migration as from tank columns? The Cold War gave NATO a clarity of purpose that has never been recaptured. The war in Ukraine provided a temporary rally point, a reminder that conventional aggression in Europe was still possible. But even that has not settled the deeper question.
Turkey's push to invite Indo-Pacific leaders suggests one answer: NATO as a global alliance of democracies, a counterweight to authoritarian powers wherever they arise. The US resistance to that idea suggests another: NATO as a regional pact, focused on Europe and the North Atlantic, with a clear if narrower mission. The European voices calling for strategic autonomy suggest a third: NATO as a transitional structure, useful for now but ultimately subordinate to a European defence capacity that does not yet exist.
Mark Rutte, who will preside over the summit as the incoming secretary-general , has the unenviable task of holding these competing visions together. Rutte is a skilled political operator, a man who has survived Dutch coalition politics for more than a decade. But coalition-building within a single country is one thing; doing so across 31 member states—soon to be 32, if Sweden's accession is complete—with divergent interests and incompatible assumptions is another. His endorsement by the US, UK, and Germany gives him institutional heft, but it also marks him as a figure of the old transatlantic consensus, at precisely the moment when that consensus is under greatest strain.
The Summit That Isn't
There is a sense, talking to those following the preparations, that the Ankara summit may be remembered less for what it decides than for what it reveals. The guest list dispute, the Czech constitutional crisis, the American criticism of European allies, the European calls for autonomy—none of these will be resolved over two days in July. But they will all be present in the room, or in the streets outside, or in the parallel meetings that take place in hotel suites and embassy back-channels. Summits, especially NATO summits, are meant to project unity and strength. Ankara feels more like an audit.
It is the second time Turkey has hosted , and the symmetry is notable. The first time, NATO was still riding the post-Cold War high, expanding eastward, confident in its model and its mission. This time, the Alliance is older, more uncertain, beset by internal divisions and external pressures it struggles to name. The city remains the same—ancient, strategic, straddling two continents. But the organisation arriving on its doorstep is different.
Rutte's visit in the weeks beforehand was meant to lay the groundwork, to ensure that procedural snags did not derail the summit itself. But the snags are not procedural. They are existential. And they cannot be smoothed over by advance trips or carefully worded communiqués.
The Aftermath
What happens after Ankara is anyone's guess. If the Indo-Pacific partners are invited, the Alliance takes a step toward a new, global identity—but at the cost of American support and European focus. If they are excluded, NATO remains a regional pact, but one that looks increasingly parochial in a multipolar world. If Europe begins to build its own defence structures, as Jetten and others are urging , NATO may become a shell, a legacy institution maintained for form's sake while the real decisions are made elsewhere.
Petr Pavel may attend the summit, or he may not . His legal case may succeed, or it may fail. Either way, the fact that a NATO member state's president had to sue his own government to be included in a summit delegation is itself a data point, a sign of how fractured the Alliance's internal politics have become.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy will almost certainly be there , a reminder of the war that has dominated NATO's attention for the past four years. But even Ukraine's presence raises questions rather than answering them. Is NATO committed to Ukraine's eventual membership, or merely to sustaining it as a buffer state? Is the Alliance prepared to defend every inch of European territory, or only the territory of its formal members? These are not hypothetical questions. They are live issues, and the answers will shape European security for decades.
The Weight of History
NATO summits are supposed to be moments of renewal, occasions for the Alliance to reaffirm its purpose and adapt to new challenges. But Ankara feels less like renewal than reckoning. The disputes over attendance, the fractures within member states, the growing European scepticism of American leadership—all of it points to an organisation at an inflection point. The Cold War is over. The post-Cold War order is over. What comes next is still being written, and the draft emerging in Ankara is messy, contradictory, uncertain.
Mark Rutte will stand at the podium on 8 July and deliver remarks about unity and collective defence, about shared values and common threats. The communiqué will be carefully negotiated, full of language that everyone can live with and no one entirely believes. And then the delegations will go home, and the real work will begin: the work of figuring out what NATO is for, in a world that no longer resembles the one it was built to address.
The summit, in other words, will settle nothing. But it may clarify everything.