Turkey: Erdogan unveils new VIP airport, rolls out red carpet ahead of July NATO summit

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is rolling out the red carpet for NATO leaders ahead of an upcoming NATO summit. “Ankara Airport opens in Turkish capital ahead of NATO summit,” by Seyit Samil Kurt, Anadolu Agency, June 26, 2026:

Ankara Airport opened in the Turkish capital on Monday ahead of the NATO leaders’ summit set to be held in the city on July 7-8, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying the new transport links will provide direct access for visiting delegations.

Speaking at the opening ceremony for Ankara Airport, Erdogan said the projects would strengthen Ankara’s aviation and transport infrastructure as the capital prepares to host the summit on July 7-8.

“With the 3-kilometer connection road in the divided-road section, we will provide direct access for delegations attending the NATO Summit,” he said.

This is the second airport in the capital city, after Esenboga Airport, which handles both domestic and international flights. Erdogan said the airport and related investments were completed in a “record” 230 days, adding that a 12.5-kilometer (7.8-mile) connection road had been built, including 6.5 kilometers of divided road and 6 kilometers of single-lane road….

Given Erdogan’s ideological beliefs, as well as his record, he clearly has ulterior motives. They likely relate to the fact that Turkey is the one NATO member that should long ago have been expelled from NATO, after the shortsighted decision to allow it in the first place.

According to a Jerusalem Post article:

Erdogan has used every available lever to remove threats to his rule, weaken parliamentary governance, build a presidential system around himself, jail journalists and political opponents, cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood, maintain channels with Iran’s mullahs, court Putin, and expand Turkish influence across the region.

Yet even this record of political maneuvering and Machiavellian diplomacy pales beside the policies Erdogan has put into motion. Turkey’s military buildup under the maximalist “Blue Homeland” doctrine is not decorative.

Its investment in aircraft carriers, its explicit threats against Greece and Israel, its movement of F16s to Turkish-occupied Cyprus, and its harboring of Hamas leadership and affiliated networks in Ankara all point in the same direction. Erdogan is not merely speaking like a revisionist power. He is behaving like one.

See also these past headlines about Turkey:

• Turkish journalist close to Erdogan: Turkey should become a nuclear power and consider nuking Israel
• Turkey: ‘Israel cannot live without hostility,’ warns Israel that it ‘may target it next’
• Turkish president Erdogan accuses Israel of ‘atrocities’ against Palestine and Lebanon, threatens to attack
• Russia, China, Turkey pushing for immediate end to war against Iran
• Is Turkey ‘the new Iran’? A top Israeli strategic analyst thinks so
• Top Israeli analyst warns about dire implications of Trump’s support of Turkish forces in Gaza
• Trump’s Jihadist ‘Board of Peace’

T0 allow Turkey to build up arms would be a grave threat to the stability of the region and beyond. While Greece has “‘fiercely’ lobbied France to halt sale of radar-guided, air-to-air Meteor missiles to Turkey, several EU countries are moving ahead with arms sales with Turkey.” They include Italy and Spain.

Turkey has been expanding its influence, and has bullied Greece in the process. See also HERE. Yet no NATO member other than Greece, or any country, for that matter, is even attempting to hold Erdogan to any standard of accountability. Erdogan knows it, and he’s willing to manipulate his leverage.

Knowing that his NATO allies will continue to ignore his growing jihadist reputation, Erdogan is buttering up NATO in style. Although Ankara Airport is deemed  to be a project to “strengthen Ankara’s position as a diplomatic center,” Erdogan also likely has two goals in mind as he readies Turkey to greet NATO members: 1. To remain a longterm NATO member, so as to expand Turkey’s global influence; and 2. To build up weaponry under the NATO banner. Turkey has already signed close to 100 bilateral defense cooperation agreements with foreign governments, “a strategy that is rapidly expanding Ankara’s global footprint in arms sales and military technology transfers.”

His efforts will likely succeed, as he rolls out the red carpet to stroke the egos of NATO globalists.

Erdogan has already accused Israel of being an aggressor and of posing “a ‌threat to the whole world” that “must be stopped.” It isn’t Israel that’s a threat to the world. It’s Islam, with over 1,400 years of conquest — a record that Erdogan reveres and longs to further. He has already declared that he has nothing against Taliban beliefs. Gullible Western leaders are no match for their clever enemies.