Carney to travel to Turkey for NATO summit next week, then Saudi Arabia
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OTTAWA – Prime Minister Mark Carney will attend the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey next week before he jets off to Saudi Arabia — his first official visits to those countries.
NATO members are expected to gather on July 7 and 8 in Ankara to celebrate an alliance-wide increase in defence spending after years of U.S. pressure for member nations to hike their military and national security budgets.
“Canada for the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall has met our NATO defence spending targets,” Carney said Tuesday in Kuujjuaq, Que. “We’re taking full responsibility for our security and sovereignty in the Arctic.”
While NATO has acknowledged that Canada has met its pledge to spend two per cent of GDP on defence for the first time this year, NATO allies remain under pressure to show up in Ankara with credible plans to meet the next alliance commitment.
The United States expects allies to present plans to ramp up spending to meet a much steeper benchmark of five per cent of GDP by 2035. Carney has said Canada will be able to meet that fiscal target but has been criticized for not showing any plan to get there.
U.S. President Donald Trump has also expressed frustration with NATO countries for not helping him fight the war he started with Iran. Alliance members have meanwhile been shaken by Trump’s bizarre demands for U.S. annexation of Greenland.
Ahead of the summit, Carney has been campaigning for allies to support the establishment of a multinational defence bank to finance the defence sector.
On Monday, the prime minister spoke with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte about defence investments and support for Ukraine, according to a readout from Carney’s office.
Rutte has been making the rounds with NATO world leaders ahead of the summit. That included a recent trip to the Oval Office, where he tried to mollify Trump and convince the president that alliance countries are pulling their weight — a case he made with the help of large charts brought in as props.
In Saudi Arabia, Carney is scheduled to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to talk about expanding trade and investment.
The Prime Minister’s Office said this will be the first visit to Turkey by a Canadian prime minister in more than a decade, and the first to Saudi Arabia in 26 years. Former prime minister Jean Chrétien travelled to Saudi Arabia in 2000.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 30, 2028.