On August 7, 2026, Turkiye’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and Pakistan’s Shehbaz Sharif collectively signed the Mecca Joint Protection Settlement, which commits their nations to collective protection and expands protection cooperation. It builds on the Saudi-Pakistani Strategic Mutual Protection Settlement of September 2025. On August 31, their overseas ministers, protection ministers, and navy chiefs met in Istanbul, saying a secretariat in Saudi Arabia, initially headed by a Pakistani secretary normal, alongside cooperation in navy know-how and manufacturing.
A very powerful query concerning the Mecca settlement is whose conflict they’re ready to battle. Though the textual content of the settlement is just not publicly accessible but, in response to a Pakistan International Ministry assertion, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and Pakistan have agreed that an armed assault towards any one of many three states shall be considered an assault towards all of them. Nevertheless, with a have a look at their conflicting pursuits, one can simply predict that they are going to battle to agree on what ought to occur subsequent.
What makes one doubt whether or not such an accord might realistically operate is the settlement’s central weak spot: its publicly introduced phrases don’t specify which forces would battle, beneath whose command, or on what timetable. All events to the accord need higher safety whereas retaining the liberty to determine which regional conflicts concern them. However when nations decide to collective protection, they need to additionally agree on when and the way they are going to defend each other, what strategic objective the accord serves, and which threats they think about widespread. They need to even be clear about who decides when navy motion is important, how they are going to share the prices, and the way far every nation is ready to go if the battle escalates; what financial pursuits they’re prepared to sacrifice, whether or not higher monetary contributions give one nation higher authority, and the way they are going to reconcile their competing ambitions.
The primary downside is that every one three nations aspire to steer the Muslim world, however every has a special concept of what that management means. As an illustration, Erdoğan’s Turkiye invokes its Ottoman heritage to undertaking authority past its borders. Turkiye’s reconversion of the Hagia Sophia right into a mosque in 2020 to revive symbols of its Ottoman previous was a part of that ambition. In a 2018 speech to provincial muftis in Ankara, Erdoğan offered Turkiye as a rustic entitled to form the Muslim world’s future due to the authority its Ottoman predecessors as soon as exercised. Since Erdoğan’s rise to energy, nostalgia for an imperial and caliphal previous has helped form Turkiye’s declare to management within the Muslim world immediately.
Saudi Arabia, in the meantime, bases its declare to management on its custodianship of Mecca and Medina and its established place in Islamic diplomacy. Within the meantime, whereas Mohammed bin Salman needs to protect that place and maintain faith as a supply of legitimacy, he’s additionally making the dominion a middle for funding, know-how, and regional diplomacy to serve the nation’s financial and political ambitions. Saudi Arabia subsequently needs a type of Islamic management that reinforces its personal place, which raises the query of how far it will help an alliance that additionally strengthens Turkiye’s competing declare to that management.
For its half, Pakistan has lengthy sought to show its navy power right into a declare to management of the Muslim world. This ambition is seen in how its leaders have defined the aim of its nuclear program. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto famously stated that different civilizations already possessed nuclear functionality, writing: “Solely the Islamic civilization was with out it, however that place was about to alter.” He was presenting Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions as an achievement that will alter the place of the whole Islamic civilization. Nearly half a century later, addressing spiritual students in December 2025, Subject Marshall Asim Munir, Pakistan’s first chief of protection forces and the nation’s high navy official, declared: “Amongst all Muslim nations, Allah has given Pakistan the honour of serving to safeguard the Haramain,” referring to Islam’s holy websites in Mecca and Medina. Munir was thereby presenting Pakistan’s navy function as a spiritual duty extending past its borders, giving Islamabad one other foundation for claiming a particular place within the Muslim world.
Additional, in 2020, International Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi threatened to prepare Muslim nations exterior the Saudi-led OIC over Kashmir. Pakistan has subsequently proven a willingness to problem the present framework of Muslim diplomacy led by Saudi Arabia or Turkiye when it fails to serve Pakistani priorities, and that is the place these ambitions might turn out to be tough to reconcile with Saudi Arabia and Turkiye’s.
These three nations have additionally had variations of their overseas insurance policies, and people variations have typically led them to work towards each other’s regional goals. As an illustration, throughout the 2017 blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, it was Turkiye that despatched troops and meals provides to Doha, serving to Qatar to withstand strain from Saudi Arabia and its companions. Pakistan has additionally resisted Saudi expectations of navy help. In 2015, after Riyadh requested Pakistani troops, plane, and warships for its intervention in Yemen, Pakistan’s parliament voted to stay impartial; this refusal confirmed that shut relations didn’t imply Islamabad accepted Riyadh’s judgment about when navy motion was obligatory.
Pakistan has additionally not proven as much as defend Saudi Arabia towards the present assaults by Iran, regardless of the so-called “NATO-like” settlement that each nations signed final September. Most not too long ago, on September 11, Saudi Arabia introduced a precautionary shutdown of its East-West pipeline following drone assaults that Riyadh stated originated in Iraq. The pipeline offered a significant different for oil exports disrupted by Iran’s restrictions at Hormuz. Individually, the Houthis captured Mokha and Perim, also referred to as Mayun, strengthening their place at Bab el-Mandeb, the southern gateway to the Purple Sea and the commerce route via Suez. Once more, regardless of each the Strategic Mutual Protection Settlement and the Mecca accord, Pakistan and Turkiye haven’t proven as much as defend Saudi Arabia, involved with themselves being drawn into the disaster, after being threatened by Houthis that they each would pay a “excessive worth” in the event that they intervened.
The navy image extends the issue. Turkiye brings many years of NATO expertise and a considerable home protection business, whereas Pakistan more and more depends on Chinese language tools, and Saudi Arabia stays closely depending on overseas suppliers. In accordance with SIPRI’s 2026 knowledge, China equipped 80 p.c of Pakistan’s main arms imports in 2021–2025, whereas the US equipped 77 p.c of Saudi Arabia’s. If Pakistani and Saudi forces had been preventing collectively, they would wish to trade related operational intelligence and coordinate forces utilizing completely different navy programs. Nevertheless, integrating these programs might require delicate technical data and help from their suppliers. Washington might object to preparations that uncovered details about American tools to Chinese language technicians, whereas Beijing might have comparable considerations about Western entry to its know-how. Each would wish to stop a rival from studying how their weapons function, figuring out their vulnerabilities, or growing methods to defeat them. Suppliers might subsequently have extra energy to restrict how intently Mecca accord events might function collectively, even when these governments agreed on the necessity for joint navy motion.
Turkiye has seen how critical these restrictions can turn out to be. In July 2019, the US excluded Ankara from the F-35 fighter program following its buy of Russia’s S-400 air protection system, arguing that the Russian system might gather delicate details about the plane’s capabilities. Turkiye’s longstanding NATO membership didn’t overcome Washington’s safety considerations. The implication for the Mecca accord is that political settlement amongst its members could also be inadequate to safe the navy integration they want. If competing suppliers’ safety considerations might hinder cooperation inside NATO, there’s little purpose to imagine that American and Chinese language tools might be simply built-in for the Mecca accord events.
Turkiye’s NATO membership creates one other complication. Despite the fact that the NATO Treaty locations limits on collective protection obligations via Articles 5 and 6, which outline the assaults and geographical areas they cowl, Turkiye can not lengthen NATO’s safety to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia just by signing one other settlement. Nevertheless, an armed assault on Turkish territory ensuing from Turkiye’s intervention in protection of both nation would increase a separate Article 5 query which limits Turkiye’s freedom of motion beneath the Mecca accord, as Ankara must think about how far it might go in defending its new companions and what penalties its involvement might have for its NATO allies.
Furthermore, from an financial perspective, the financial imbalance among the many three members makes the Mecca settlement arduous to maintain. Saudi Arabia brings substantial oil wealth, Turkiye brings industrial capability however continues to battle with inflation, and Pakistan stays an IMF borrower. These variations increase questions on how they’d divide the prices of getting ready for, preventing, and recovering from a standard conflict. NATO members finance their very own forces whereas contributing to widespread budgets via an agreed system primarily based on nationwide earnings. The Mecca accord’s assertion broadcasts a secretariat and industrial cooperation with out explaining an equal monetary association.
If Saudi Arabia is anticipated to supply many of the cash, wouldn’t it demand higher affect over deployments and procurement? Would Turkiye and Pakistan settle for that affect whereas supplying forces and bearing casualties? Conversely, would Riyadh finance navy commitments over which its companions retained a veto? Paying for weapons can also be completely different from funding years of operations, changing losses and compensating for disrupted commerce. An additional problem is that assaults on Saudi oil infrastructure might weaken the income supporting any Saudi monetary dedication. In accordance with present experiences, oil loadings at Saudi Arabia’s Purple Sea port of Yanbu have stopped following drone assaults by the Iran-backed Houthi militia. The port has served as a significant outlet for Saudi oil exports following the disaster within the Strait of Hormuz, and, in response to specialists, this pause in loadings might trigger additional extreme disruption to world power markets.
The issue goes additional: the three nations don’t share the identical enemies. Pakistan shares a border with Iran, and each Islamabad and Ankara preserve relations with Tehran, whereas Saudi Arabia faces assaults from Iranian rockets in its territory in addition to from its Houthi allies. Extra importantly, Turkiye has stated the accord is not directed towards Iran, which places Saudi Arabia’s state of affairs in limbo, because it’s not clear what’s on this accord for Saudi Arabia and what safety Riyadh can anticipate if its companions prioritize preserving relations with Tehran.
Furthermore, the Mecca accord nations have completely different approaches to Israel, the opposite main participant within the area. Turkiye’s relations with Israel are confrontational, and Pakistan doesn’t acknowledge Israel as a state, whereas Saudi Arabia stays the topic of efforts to broaden the Abraham Accords, though Riyadh situations normalization on Palestinian statehood.
Then again, with India, Pakistan’s principal strategic rival, the issues are amplified Saudi Arabia maintains a detailed partnership with India, with bilateral commerce reaching $41.88 billion in fiscal 2024-2025. Would Riyadh jeopardize that relationship to battle New Delhi on Islamabad’s behalf? Would Pakistan confront Iran for Saudi Arabia? If every member preserves its personal partnerships whereas anticipating the others to soak up its safety dangers, what does the promise that an assault towards one is an assault towards all imply when a disaster arrives?