The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit this week in the Turkish capital began in familiar circumstances: police repression of anyone dissenting against the alliance. Ahead of the meeting, Ankara was placed under what amounted to a quasi–state of emergency. Without formally declaring emergency rule, the governor’s office banned virtually all forms of protest and public political expression from June 28 to July 10. Road and park closures, emptied student dormitories, special security arrangements, and accreditation barriers for journalists turned the capital into a securitized zone where political expression and ordinary urban life were temporarily suspended.

Officials repeatedly emphasized the security risks surrounding the summit. But the scale of the crackdown pointed to something more revealing: hundreds of people were detained in pre-summit operations, including academics, journalists, lawyers, trade unionists, and civil society figures.

These figures reveal not only the erosion of the rule of law in Turkey but also Ankara’s continuing importance within the alliance. Indeed, while NATO leaders often say that the bloc is built on shared values of democracy and the rule of law, repression in Turkey has rarely threatened the country’s standing inside the bloc. It’s not hard to see why. Turkey possesses NATO’s second-largest army, controls access between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, borders the Middle East and the Caucasus, and retains diplomatic leverage from Ukraine to Syria. Its strategic value has long outweighed liberal concerns, and it is again today proving its importance to the bloc. Turkey is hosting the NATO meetup as the war in Ukraine, the devastation of Gaza, and the escalating conflict around Iran, are reshaping regions directly connected to one of the alliance’s most strategically important members.