From NATO’s 2004 Istanbul Summit to the Present
June 30, 2026
NATO’s 19th Summit was held in Istanbul, Türkiye, on June 28–29, 2004. Twenty-two years later, the 36th NATO Summit will be held on July 7–8, 2026, in Ankara. Even a brief look at the 19th Summit Communiqué and the one to be published next Wednesday will unmistakably demonstrate how much has changed since then in Europe, transatlantic relations, the Middle East, and Türkiye.
In 2004, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had been in power for almost two years. It still is. It had come to power with a democratic agenda. Only six months after the Istanbul Summit, on December 17, 2004, the EU’s Brussels Summit marked a turning point in EU-Türkiye relations. The European Council concluded that Türkiye had sufficiently met the political criteria and consequently decided to open accession negotiations with Ankara on October 3, 2005.
Today, the accession process is dead and buried, and Türkiye’s democratic decline continues at full speed. There were few, even at the time, who genuinely believed that EU membership was on the horizon. Yet, remaining on the democratic path would have made Türkiye the North Star of the Middle East and enhanced our international standing far beyond the significance of our strategic location and military power. Today, we remain a member of NATO, but with our Islamist agenda, we essentially belong to the Middle East. Does that mean we enjoy solid relations with regional countries? Unfortunately, no.
The 19th Summit Communiqué started with the following:
“We, the Heads of State and Government of the member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance, reaffirmed today the enduring value of the transatlantic link and of NATO as the basis for our collective defence and the essential forum for security consultation between Europe and North America. Our 26 nations are united in democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law, and faithful to the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter…” [i]emphasis added)
Rest assured that next week, NATO leaders will repeat the usual language anyway.
Only months before the Istanbul summit, seven new member countries – Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – had joined the Alliance in the biggest round of enlargement in NATO’s history.
In Istanbul:
- Allied leaders agreed to expand the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Today, the Taliban is back with its oppressive, terrorist agenda;
- At their meeting, coming after the disastrous invasion of Iraq, “they decided to offer assistance to the Government of Iraq with the training of its security forces”. As mentioned in a recent New York Times article, since the US invasion in 2003, the central government in Baghdad has struggled to strike a balance between the interests of its former occupier and those of Iran, the regional Shiite power next door[ii];
- They declared that terrorism and the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and their means of delivery posed key threats and challenges to Alliance and international security. While the proliferation of WMD remains a challenge, today’s top agenda items are the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the latter negatively impacting the world’s energy security;
- Allied leaders celebrated the success of NATO’s “Open Door” policy and reaffirmed that the seven new members would not be the last. They said the door to membership remained open. Indeed, they were not the last, but the door is now closed for good;
- To enhance the Euro-Atlantic Partnership, they decided to put a special focus on engaging with NATO’s partners in the strategically important regions of the Caucasus and Central Asia. How determined they still are is a question;
- They noted the progress that was made in 2003 on the withdrawal of Russian military forces from the Republic of Moldova but regretted that this progress did not continue in 2004. All that was soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the early years of President Putin’s rule, and a decade before Russia invaded Crimea;
- They also decided to offer cooperation to the broader Middle East region by launching the “Istanbul Cooperation Initiative”. This Initiative was offered by NATO to interested countries in the region, starting with the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, to foster mutually beneficial bilateral relationships focusing on practical cooperation where NATO can add value, notably in the defense and security fields. Today, the Gulf states are under Iran’s fire. Whether they still count on NATO support in those fields is another question;
- In paragraph 39 of the 46-paragraph communiqué, allied leaders said that since its creation two years prior, the NATO-Russia Council had raised the quality of the relationship between the Alliance and Russia to a new level, to the benefit of the entire Euro-Atlantic area. With the war in Ukraine, this is now history. The war in Ukraine is already a longer conflict than the Second World War. Could history be written differently? Perhaps. At present, both the Europeans and the Russians are getting weary of the continued war, and President Putin appears concerned about domestic discontent. Yet, his eventual successor’s policy on Ukraine will not be dramatically different from his. Europe and Russia have to resume dialogue to get their relationship on track. This will be no easy task, but there is no other option;
- In the next paragraph, following the one on the “NATO-Russia Council”, they welcomed Ukraine’s determination to pursue full Euro-Atlantic integration;
- And finally, they reaffirmed the vital transatlantic link, and extended new offers of cooperation to countries and regions of strategic importance. Unfortunately for all, the transatlantic relationship is in crisis and is likely to remain so for the next few years, at least.
In brief, the last twenty-two years have not matched the optimism of the decades following the end of the Cold War. Starting with the invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring interventions, the war in Ukraine, the Trump White House, and now the war with Iran, the West is confronted with multiple challenges. Unfortunately, NATO’s Ankara Summit is unlikely to mark a major turning point. With Russia fighting its “Special Operation” now for four-and-a-half years, the global winner is China.
[i] https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/official-texts-and-resources/official-texts/2004/06/28/istanbul-summit-communique
[ii] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/world/middleeast/iraq-ali-al-zaidi.html?smid=em-share

