Rob Denning 
Picture two motorcades pulling out of the same hotel, minutes apart, heading to the same dinner in Ankara — carrying the prime minister and the president of the same country, who spent the whole day not meeting. That was Tuesday at the NATO summit, and it wasn't a scheduling accident. It was the visible end of a fight that has been running in Prague for months.
For a Czech reader the split is startling; for the other leaders in the room it must have looked stranger still. In plain terms: the Czech Republic showed up to Europe's most important security meeting with two heads of delegation who barely acknowledged each other.
The short version
- Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO) leads the official Czech delegation, but President Petr Pavel is also in Ankara — after the Constitutional Court ordered the government to let him go, per iROZHLAS.
- The two arrived at the summit dinner from the same hotel but in separate motorcades, and their delegations spent the day passing each other, reports iROZHLAS.
- Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan invited Pavel to the informal leaders' dinner that was originally meant for prime ministers only, according to iROZHLAS.
So why are there two delegations?
Because the government and the head of state fought for months over a single question: who represents the Czech Republic at a key alliance summit. That dispute was settled not in a coalition meeting but in court — the Constitutional Court ordered the cabinet to allow Pavel's participation, as iROZHLAS describes it. So both men are in Ankara, and both are, in effect, running their own show.
The awkwardness was hard to hide. Photographers noted Babiš and Pavel operating "on their own axis," separated by a whole row in the first group photo, as Echo24 headlined it. Babiš, for his part, kept it light: asked what he'd do if he ended up seated next to Pavel at dinner, he joked they would take a selfie and everyone would be happy, quoted by Lidovky.
Is a president in the room a problem — or an asset?
That is where opinion splits along political lines. Senate speaker Miloš Vystrčil (ODS) argued Pavel's presence strengthens rather than weakens the government's hand, and that both men will work in the country's interest, he told Czech Television. Senator Pavel Fischer was blunter about how it got this far, saying the whole confusion could have been avoided "if Andrej Babiš had done his job instead of limiting the president," in an interview with iROZHLAS.
That last point is the one worth holding onto. Political scientist Ladislav Cabada of Prague's Metropolitan University called it "very sad" that the debate for months was about who would be represented rather than what was on the agenda, speaking to iROZHLAS.
What's actually on the table
Behind the choreography sits a real agenda. Pavel joins the main session of the North Atlantic Council on Wednesday, and — against the government's original plan — attended Tuesday's leaders' dinner too, per iROZHLAS. The summit gathered the usual heavyweights, from Donald Trump and alliance chief Mark Rutte to Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky, as Lidovky reports.
There is also a substantive shift worth flagging: Vystrčil welcomed that the cabinet is now promising to raise defence spending and to start funding military aid to Ukraine, he told Czech Television. But Cabada offered a caveat that matters for anyone reading the fine print: a pledge to hit defence targets by 2035 sits "beyond the horizon" of the current government's existence, he told iROZHLAS.
What to watch next
- Whether Babiš and Pavel are seen together at Wednesday's North Atlantic Council session — a first joint appearance would signal a truce; continued distance would confirm the standoff.
- Whether the government puts numbers and dates on its defence-spending and Ukraine-aid promises, or leaves them safely "beyond the horizon."
- Whether the Constitutional Court's intervention becomes a template for future disputes over who represents Czechia abroad.
