Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed a Joint Defense Agreement in Mecca on Friday, August 7, 2026. The agreement includes the principle that an attack against one of the parties will be considered an attack against all parties.
International relations expert Associate Professor Orhan Karaoğlu says the agreement should be assessed in the context of changes to the regional security architecture and shifts in the global balance of power. Karaoğlu argues that the pact's significance is determined not only by its legal text but also by the period in which it was signed.
Seeking an alternative to the US-centered security model
Karaoğlu says Gulf countries have pursued a security model for decades based on arms purchases, the allocation of military bases and strategic dependence. He argues that the model's fundamental weakness is that final decisions remain largely dependent on Washington's domestic political calculations.
Karaoğlu argues that the conflict involving Israel and the United States and Iran, which began in June 2025 and continued in February 2026, exposed this weakness. He maintains that Washington's willingness to intervene remained unpredictable while US bases were being targeted.
In this context, the Mecca Agreement is viewed not as a complete break with the United States but as Saudi Arabia's effort to move from a single-layered security approach to a multilayered security network. Karaoğlu says the agreement is not a “Muslim NATO” but an arrangement seeking greater regional autonomy while maintaining ties with the Washington-centered architecture.
The three countries' complementary capabilities
The parties to the agreement possess capabilities in different areas. Saudi Arabia stands out for its financial strength and its geographic position along the Strait of Hormuz, the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb; Türkiye for its regional power, NATO experience and defense industry; and Pakistan for its nuclear deterrence and experience with ground forces.
However, the agreement does not yet define an integrated command structure, a joint doctrine or clear military obligations. The pact is therefore assessed in its current form as a political signal and a framework with the potential for future institutionalization.
The three countries' relations with Iran are also identified as factors that set limits on the agreement. Türkiye and Pakistan are seen as reluctant to open a permanent front because they share borders with Iran and maintain commercial relations and diplomatic contacts with Tehran. For this reason, the pact is considered to have been designed as a deterrence-focused security mechanism rather than as a bloc directly opposed to Iran.
A third center of gravity in regional competition
Karaoğlu says the Mecca Agreement has the potential to add a third center of gravity to the existing bipolar structure. Rather than seeking direct confrontation between Iran and actors linked to it and the Israel-US axis, this structure is described as an effort to prevent either side from establishing a single-center dominance in the region.
Karaoğlu's assessment argues that, following a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a rival alignment involving Israel, Greece, the Greek Cypriot administration of Southern Cyprus and India has begun to take shape. He says this competition could create two separate blocs along a broad corridor extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to South Asia.
Türkiye's connectivity initiatives that exclude Israel, such as the Hejaz Railway project, are also linked to the economic and logistical dimensions of the competition. These initiatives are assessed as part of an effort to create an alternative to the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.
The impact of US-China competition
Pakistan's formal strategic alliance with China is examined as another dimension linking the Mecca Agreement to global power competition. If tensions between India and China intensify, this relationship could become a new source of friction among the parties to the agreement.
Saudi Arabia's deepening energy and infrastructure ties with China while maintaining its security ties with the United States is presented as an example of a strategy based on multiple dependencies. Karaoğlu argues that Riyadh is using Beijing's investment and infrastructure partnership as a balancing factor at a time when it does not fully trust Washington's security guarantees.
From this perspective, the pact is not directly a Chinese or US project. However, Karaoğlu assesses that the regional actors were pushed to establish their own security arrangements by the vacuum that emerged as Washington directed its strategic attention toward competition with China in the Indo-Pacific and limited its engagement in the Middle East.
The agreement's future
In its current form, the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement is characterized less as a concrete military structure than as a political statement symbolizing the regional impact of changing global power balances.
The agreement's durability will depend on how effectively the parties can manage competing areas of interest, including their relations with Iran, the issue of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, India-Pakistan tensions, US-China competition and NATO's future. Karaoğlu says the process could represent an early stage in the transition from dependence on a unipolar security system to a network of flexible, interest-based arrangements involving multiple actors.
