President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif came together for Friday prayers at Masjid al-Haram in Mecca.
The leaders of Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan performed Friday prayers at the Kaaba alongside their delegations. Images showed the three leaders standing in the same row, while cameras also captured Erdoğan, bin Salman and Sharif viewing the Kaaba together after the prayer.
Images showed senior figures from the delegations of the three countries accompanying the leaders. Erdoğan, bin Salman and Sharif’s presence together at Masjid al-Haram drew particular attention because of the high-level contacts held between the three countries on the same day.
The meeting of the three leaders at the Kaaba took place on the day the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement was signed between Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. As part of the program before Friday prayers, Erdoğan, bin Salman and Sharif signed an agreement that elevated defense and security cooperation between the three countries to a new level.
The agreement seeks to strengthen the principle of collective defense between Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It envisages that an armed attack against one of the parties would be considered an attack against all three countries.
One of the day’s most prominent scenes, however, came from Masjid al-Haram after the diplomatic talks and signing ceremony. The three countries’ leaders performing Friday prayers in the same row at the Kaaba stood out as a symbolic display of solidarity following the trilateral summit in Mecca.
Images of Erdoğan, bin Salman and Sharif standing side by side at the Kaaba drew widespread attention on social media. They came amid recently strengthened political, diplomatic and defense ties between Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
The trilateral summit held in Mecca on the same day, the signing of the defense agreement and the three leaders’ joint Friday prayers at Masjid al-Haram became one of the most notable political and symbolic displays of the close relations developing along the Türkiye-Saudi Arabia-Pakistan axis.
