New Delhi, June 26 -- Had it been held anywhere else, Donald Trump says he would not have bothered to go.

that his commitment to the 77-year-old alliance depends less on Article 5's mutual-defense guarantee than on which country happens to be hosting that year.

The remark landed during a fraught stretch for the alliance. Turkish police arrested at least 209 people in Ankara between June 22 and 23, including political activists, lawyers, an academic, and a journalist identified by Human Rights Watch as a prominent LGBTQ rights activist, in raids carried out under anti-terror warrants issued by Ankara's prosecutor's office. HRW published its account of the arrests on Wednesday, the same week Trump hosted Rutte at the Oval Office and Erdog...