Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has met with a bipartisan delegation of US lawmakers in Ankara ahead of the NATO summit, diplomatic sources said.
Fidan received Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, co-chair of the US Senate NATO Observer Group and a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, along with Sens. Chris Coons, Dick Durbin and Mike Rounds, and US Rep. Mike Turner, the sources said.
The bipartisan US congressional delegation is visiting Türkiye to participate in the NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum and is scheduled to meet heads of state and foreign counterparts, as well as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, according to the sources.
Separately, Fidan addressed an event titled European Security After the Ankara Summit: Strengthening Cooperation Among NATO Allies Across Europe, organised jointly by the Foreign Ministry's Centre for Strategic Research and Chatham House in Ankara, the sources added.
Leveraging presidential diplomacy
Ahead of the summit, Fidan also said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's relationship with US President Donald Trump could help ease tensions within the alliance.
"It is just a matter of trust for Mr Trump, and friendship," Fidan said, adding that Türkiye intended to "use this friendship for the benefit of the greater good, for the entire NATO family."
The 32-member alliance is due to convene in Ankara on Tuesday for talks expected to focus on the future of transatlantic security, defence spending and responses to regional and global challenges.
Fidan said he expected technical discussions at the summit to proceed smoothly.
"I don't see any problem with that," he said.
Fidan also stressed that Türkiye and other European countries agree on the importance of the alliance.
"Nobody is discussing the necessity of NATO," he said.
He criticised proposals to deepen defence cooperation within the European Union outside NATO structures, calling them a "structural problem within NATO."
