US President Donald Trump landed in Ankara on Tuesday for a NATO summit where leaders are hoping to woo him with promises on defence spending, an AFP correspondent said.
The US leader is due to hold talks with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his sprawling presidential palace before joining an official leaders dinner ahead of the main session of the summit on Wednesday.
Trump landed at 1:51 pm (1051 GMT) after making his first foreign flight aboard his new Qatari-gifted Air Force One plane where he was greeted on the tarmac by Erdogan and a presidential guard, some dressed in blue, others in red.
On his first official visit to Ankara, Trump was then to be taken to Erdogan’s presidential palace where guardsmen dressed in historical warrior costumes were awaiting him on the steps outside, an AFP correspondent said.
The palace boasts soaring atriums and grandiose halls, its interior decorated with onyx, marble and intricate geometric patterns.
The opulence was not likely to be lost on Trump, with one room displaying an impressionistic painting of Erdogan and a cabinet with a crystal panther, an AFP correspondent said.
Ahead of his arrival, NATO allies have tried to showcase surging defence spending with new arms contracts worth billions in an effort to placate the mercurial US leader’s fury over Europe’s response to the war with Iran.
The two-day gathering comes a year after NATO members pledged to ramp up security-related spending to five percent of GDP under pressure from the US leader.
NATO chief Mark Rutte has insisted European countries are “delivering” by bolstering military budgets and moving to take more responsibility for the defence of their continent in the face of Russia.