ANKARA, April 13 (Reuters) – Turkey said on Monday that NATO allies should use their July summit in Ankara to reset ties with U.S. President Donald Trump and prepare for a potential reduction of U.S. involvement in the alliance.
Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said that Turkey believed Trump would attend the NATO leaders’ summit on July 7-8 due to his “personal respect” for President Tayyip Erdogan, but added he understood Trump was otherwise reluctant come to the meeting.
Trump has criticised NATO for years and last week threatened to pull the United States out nL1N40K0UD of the alliance over European members’ refusal to send ships to unblock the Strait of Hormuz near Iran. That compounded friction within the bloc over his earlier plans to acquire Greenland.
Fidan told the state-owned Anadolu news agency that allies had long considered Trump’s criticisms to be rhetoric, but were now planning around the possibility of reduced U.S. involvement and ramping up their own defensive capacities.
“NATO countries need to turn this Ankara Summit into an opportunity to put ties with the United States on a systematic basis,” he said.
“If there will be a U.S. withdrawal from some NATO mechanisms, there needs to be a plan and programme to phase this out so nobody is left in the open,” he added.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has said he understood Trump’s frustrations with the alliance, but that the “large majority of European nations” had been helpful to Washington’s war effort in Iran.
A senior White House official told Reuters last week that Trump, as part of frustration with NATO, had also considered the option of removing some U.S. troops nL1N40S0YV from Europe.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Jonathan Spicer, Aidan Lewis)
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