Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey have signed a joint defence pact known as the "Makkah Pact" in Mecca on Friday (7 August). The agreement was signed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
In a joint statement, the pact is intended to provide collective deterrence against any act of aggression, establishing that an armed attack against any one of the three countries will be considered as an armed attack against all of them. Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the agreement was based on "eternal brotherhood and Islamic solidarity" to build shared strategic interests and long-term defence cooperation.
Negotiations for the pact began after Hamas's attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. Saudi Arabia, which hosts United States military assets and infrastructure, has come under attack from Iran and its ally the Houthis in Yemen. Observers noted that the agreement will leverage Turkey's military power as the second-strongest force in NATO, Saudi Arabia's financial power as the world's largest oil exporter, and Pakistan's strategic capability as the only Muslim-majority nation possessing nuclear weapons.
Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, Executive Director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States' South and Wider Europe, told Al Jazeera that the agreement is a framework for closer strategic, military and defence industry coordination among the three regional powers, rather than a joint defence pact comparable to NATO.
Murat Aslan, a professor of international politics at Hasan Kalyoncu University in Turkey, said the agreement is expected also to include aspects of enhancing domestic defence capacity, especially for Saudi Arabia, which for several decades has relied on importing defence products from the United States.
