The Makkah Defence Pact and the Making of a New Regional Order

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye have signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement on 7 August in 2026 and this signing is far more significant than what ceremony and symbolism it carries. Signed in Makkah by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the deal provides that an armed attack against any one of the three countries will be considered as an attack against all the three countries.  But its sincerity was greatest not in the denouncing of a specific enemy but in an understanding of the strategic environment which has produced an enemy.

It is not a moment for defining the agreement as an “anti-Iran, anti-Israel, anti-American pact. There’s no mentioning of any of these states being specifically called out as the target state. Instead, the agreement seems to be part of a larger strategic pivot amid a more complicated security landscape in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan have divergent agenda in foreign-policy, but all three countries have an interest in lessening strategic vulnerability while gaining more ‘room for manoeuvre’.

For the capital of the Hejaz, the key strategic priority is defending its territory, which contains important military bases, energy resources and trading lines, set in a much-changing environment. Saudi Arabia has close relations with Washington, but its foreign policy in recent years has been firmly founded on a strong sense of need for building more than one strategic partnership with the outside world. As such, the Makkah deal is more a tool for “strategic hedging” and less a statement of opposition to a specific regime.

The participation of Türkiye is especially significant. While Ankara is a NATO country, it is also developing an autonomous regional foreign policy. In particular the dealings of its government with Iran, Russia, the Gulf monarchies, Europe, and the United States make it difficult to pigeonhole current Turkish strategy into a neat geopolitical box. The importance of this in the context of Türkiye’s presence in the country is such that shooting multi-alignment rather than sectarian or bloc confrontation.

On the other hand, Pakistan has years of defence cooperation with Saudi Arabia and a growing institutionalized strategic ties with Türkiye. The deal provides Islamabad a chance to take the existing military cooperation into a larger strategic partnership. However, Pakistan needs to prudently guard its ties with the neighbouring country Iran as well as its ancestral ties with Saudi Arabia and also protect and carry forward its strategic partnership with China. The most sensible thing for Pakistan to do, then, is not bloc politics but calibrated multi-alignment.

Particularly noted is Egypt’s non-participation in the defence pact, but it is too early to draw a clear conclusion that the country had been denied its membership due to the influence of any other country, including the United States and Israel. Indeed, Egypt has been continuing its strong partnerships with Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan within the framework of R4. In June 2026, all four countries’ foreign ministers met in Cairo and reiterated their efforts in the realm of consultation and regional stability and coordinated diplomacy.  This isn’t necessarily a foreign veto in action, then, that Egypt is not a party to a certain military arrangement, but could be partly because of its own strategic decisions.

The same level of skepticism should be applied towards the general pronouncements about Israel. As Türkiye’s rival relationship with Tel Aviv and the Saudi Arabia’s major role in the Arab-Israeli conflict weighs in, Israel will increasingly be considered a part of the “strategic equation” of the region. However, to date there is no visible evidence that the Makkah agreement was essentially a plan against Israel. Likewise, any potential Pakistani naval base at Pasni or the potential major shift of Pakistan’s maritime strategy should be viewed currently not as policy, but as potential options.

The rising significance of geography at sea is much more evident. National security is entangling in increasing ways with the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Red Sea and network of commercial and energy corridors. Nowadays, ports and shipping routes are not just economic infrastructure, but strategic assets, in a world of geopolitical dynamics and fragile supply networks. This geographical locational aspect highlights the significance attributed to Pakistan as going beyond its geographical limelight in geography.

Chances are on the rise that China will play a key role in this new order. Beijing has already got noticeable economic presence in Pakistan and the Gulf countries, and importantly, it has built a long-term strategic presence in the Indian Ocean via the Belt and Road Initiative and CPEC. However, China has tended towards more flexible economic and diplomatic ties rather than military alliances. Saudi-Türkiye-Pakistan cooperation thus puts Beijing in a stronger position to maintain room for manoeuvre within the new framework without having to join it formally.

The emerging picture is rather not that of a straightforward American power-substitution than one of an American power-displacement. Instead, the Middle East seems to be shifting towards a more pluralist and networked security configuration, in which governments have multiple relations with rival entities at the same time. Saudi Arabia can cooperate with the US and work towards closer ties with Pakistan and Türkiye; Türkiye can be in NATO and yet have a policy of its own in the region; Pakistan can have closer relationship with China, and Saudi Arabia and Türkiye; and at the same time take part in the dialogue between Pakistan and Iran and the West.

After signing the Makkah agreement, its ultimate effect will be determined. Though it might turn into a regular framework of intelligence sharing, joint exercises, defence production and operational co-ordination it could serve as a lasting centrepiece of regional security. Its impact will be more limited, if it is kept largely declaratory.

But at this time the most credible inference is that the Makkah pact is far from being an alliance against a common enemy but rather a strategy for the breakdown of one country’s reliance on the other in the region for security. The new order will not be determined by the permanent blocs but by overlapping partnerships and by strategic autonomy and a considered form of interdependence. It will be in that environment that the effectiveness of Pakistan’s activities in driving strategic convergence with Saudi Arabia and Türkiye will have to be judged in terms how both the countries can play it out within a stable security matrix without being bound by the machinations of the rivalries that are defining the region today.