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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is working to arrange a face-to-face meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Los Angeles next month, timed around a World Cup soccer match between Türkiye and the United States, according to people familiar with the matter speaking to Bloomberg.
The potential encounter would take place less than two weeks before Türkiye is scheduled to host the NATO summit in Ankara, a gathering that carries heightened stakes as Washington signals it may further reduce its role in supporting the military alliance's European operations.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, has already emerged as an unlikely venue for international diplomacy, with world leaders eyeing the tournament's schedule as an opportunity for bilateral contact during a global sporting event.
A Türkiye-U.S. match would provide Erdogan with a natural opening to request a sit-down with Trump, who has shown a personal affinity for high-profile sporting events and has used them previously as diplomatic backdrops.
The timing of a potential Trump-Erdogan meeting would give both leaders a chance to align ahead of the Ankara summit, where the future of American commitments to NATO Europe is expected to dominate the agenda.
Growing signs that the Trump administration intends to scale back Washington's traditional role within the alliance have unsettled European member states and raised questions about the summit's outcome.
The two leaders have maintained a notably warmer relationship than Erdogan shared with previous U.S. administrations, built largely on direct personal contact and a shared preference for bilateral deal-making over multilateral frameworks.
Any meeting around the World Cup fixture would continue that pattern, allowing both sides to engage outside the formal structure of the NATO summit itself.
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