WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump has berated and belittled many of his European counterparts expected to attend next week's NATO summit in Turkey. But host Recep Tayyip Erdogan has drawn on his close ties with the U.S. president to secure his presence at the Ankara event — an appearance that may even come with a significant gift related to Turkish defense. Trump has frequently lavished praise on the Turkish president, calling him a “hell of a leader” and a good friend. “I would not have gone for most people,” Trump said last week. “But he called me up. He said: ‘Please, I have it in Turkey. You got to be there. The United States has to be in there.’ And so I’m going out of respect to President Erdogan.” Leveraging that respect has helped Erdogan avoid the disarray that the U.S. president’s absence would cause the alliance, particularly at a time when Trump has been repeatedly threatening to pull U.S. forces from Europe and scale back America’s role in NATO , unsettling allies. Trump has long rebuked other NATO countries over their defense spending —