“Turkey is not an easy partner for Europe,” wrote Maria Simeonova of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “For Europeans, this is a classic dilemma: whether to turn a blind eye to domestic abuses for the sake of geopolitical expediency,” she added.
Erdoğan's illiberalism has only accelerated since 2019. Türkiye is the only European NATO member rated “Not Free” by Freedom House, and it now holds the worst due-process score on earth. 90% of its national media are under government control.
Europe’s defence hub
Still, under Erdoğan, defence trade and joint procurement with Europe has only grown. Turkish defence company Baykar, which makes the TB2 drone (one of Türkiye’s drones used in Ukraine), is owned by Selçuk Bayraktar, Erdoğan's son-in-law. Baykar has acquired Italy's Piaggio Aerospace, formed a joint venture with Italian defence company Leonardo, and signed a memorandum of understanding with France's Safran.
Turkish defence exports have more than tripled since 2021 to €9 billion, with exports to Europe and the US nearly quadrupling. Turkey now supplies about 65% of the armed drones used worldwide.
Last week's NATO summit in Ankara only further cemented this relationship. Turkish companies Aselsan, Roketsan, STM, and TÜBİTAK won contracts in all five of NATO's new joint weapons programmes, which included a €23.7 billion air and missile defence project alongside US firm Raytheon and Germany's Rheinmetall. Aselsan, Roketsan, and ASFAT are all owned by the Turkish Armed Forces Foundation, a state-military holding.
New defence expenditures “will satisfy the US desire to increase defence spending in EU countries, as well as further tying European and Turkish industries,” Riccardo Gasco of the Istanbul-based think tank IstanPol told us before the summit.
A hard power world
Europe seems to have made its choice: human rights and rule of law come second to hard power. Uncertainty over the US's role in European security makes Türkiye look more and more appealing, with NATO’s second-largest army and a well-developed defence industry.
“Europe urgently needs scalable, combat-relevant, cost-effective capabilities,” Arda Mevlütoğlu, defence analyst and Managing Director of Mergen Analytical Strategies, told us. “The Turkish advantage is system integration: taking sensors, effectors, data links, software, platforms, and operational feedback and turning them into usable capabilities relatively quickly.”
Rule of law?
The second criterion of the EU’s arms exports rules requires weighing human rights conditions in the destination country. In 2019, this enabled the suspension of exports to Türkiye, but today, the criterion has taken a back seat.
The Commission's 2025 report on Türkiye found a judiciary under executive control, targeting opposition figures and ignoring judgments by the European Court of Human Rights. The European Parliament stated that Turkey's geopolitical importance could not compensate for its democratic backsliding.
Having seemingly given up on pushing for reforms in Türkiye in connection to its status as an EU membership candidate, the EU is leaning into defence cooperation, which doesn't enforce rule of law reforms. “While the EU remains engaged with Turkey on security and migration, Brussels no longer treats Ankara as a viable candidate for membership,” said EU Türkiye rapporteur Nacho Sánchez Amor.
In April 2025, Germany used its veto within the four-nation Eurofighter consortium to block the sale of some 40 Typhoon jets to Turkey over the arrest of opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu. Three months later, the block was lifted. By October, as a fresh arrest warrant hit İmamoğlu, the UK and Türkiye finalised the deal.
What changed between April and October was not the attacks on democracy, but the government in Berlin. Friedrich Merz's new coalition prioritises defence growth over tying deals to democratic standards.
And Türkiye’s weapons extend far beyond just NATO or Ukraine. UN investigators found Ethiopian forces using Turkish drones responsible for the killing of 60 civilians at a displacement camp. Human Rights Watch identified TB2 strikes by Burkina Faso's military on markets and a funeral, and a UN panel concluded Turkey broke the Libya arms embargo.
None of this factored into the deals just signed in Ankara. Europe has made its choice.