NATO’s push for higher defense budgets decried

By the Editorial Team · Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Thousands of protesters across Turkiye demonstrated against NATO's plan to increase member states' defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035 ahead of the Ankara summit. The opposition highlights fears that higher military budgets will strain social services and primarily benefit the U.S. arms industry, intensifying debate over NATO's economic and political influence.

As Turkiye prepares to host the NATO summit on July 25-26 in Ankara, thousands of demonstrators gathered over the weekend in major cities including Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir to protest the alliance’s push for increased defense spending among member states. The demonstrations expressed widespread opposition to NATO’s call for raising defense budgets to 5 percent of GDP by 2035, a target originally agreed upon at the 2022 NATO summit and strongly advocated by the United States.

Protesters carried banners with slogans such as “NATO wants war, workers want peace,” “Budget for the people, not for NATO,” and “No to NATO, no to war,” voicing vocal resistance to what they described as militarization at the expense of social welfare. Participants included workers, civilians, and members of political parties. In Istanbul, a large rally organized by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkiye featured Chair Arzu Cerkezoglu, who criticized the proposed defense budget increases as a threat to social security and an added economic burden on ordinary citizens. “We want more jobs, not more weapons. We want more schools, not more missiles. We want more hospitals, not more military spending,” she said.

At a separate rally led by the Communist Party of Turkiye, demonstrators employed funeral imagery to symbolize their call for NATO’s dissolution. Party member Cem Demirok criticized the alliance’s justification for increased military expenditures as a pretext to enrich the arms industry, saying such spending is financed through tax policies that ultimately impoverish people while enabling conflicts abroad.

The protests intensified in Ankara, where authorities imposed a ban on demonstrations ahead of the summit. Despite the restrictions, police detained more than 100 individuals during a Sunday protest, according to the Cumhuriyet daily.

Analysts suggest that public dissent over the NATO spending goals reflects broader anxieties about the domestic ramifications of escalating militarization. Baris Doster, a scholar at Marmara University in Istanbul, described NATO as more than a defense organization, characterizing it as an institution with entrenched economic, political, and ideological interests led by the United States. Raising the defense spending target, he noted, would largely benefit the U.S. defense industry by compelling allies to purchase more weapons and military equipment, thereby imposing costs on their own economies.

As the summit convenes, NATO member states are expected to discuss mechanisms to implement the defense expenditure commitments amid both internal concerns and external geopolitical pressures, with the issue remaining a point of contention among the alliance and its constituents.

This article was reported by synthesizing coverage from multiple independent news outlets to present a balanced, unbiased account. Read about our editorial standards. Spotted an error? Let us know.