Mecca Pact: What does Ankara want from defense agreements with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia?

Strait of Hormuz

President Erdogan, in a recent interview, stated that the three nations believe "joint security will improve stability in the region, including the Strait of Hormuz," and that "security and economic progress cannot be separated." The explicit mention of the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global oil shipments pass, signals that the pact is not a purely ceremonial document. Turkey's inclusion in a Gulf-centered security architecture is unusual; Ankara has historically positioned itself as a NATO-anchored power with a Mediterranean and Black Sea focus. By tying itself to the Strait, Turkey is signaling a long-term interest in energy security and freedom of navigation in a chokepoint it does not geographically border. For Pakistan, whose naval assets and Gwadar port sit near the approaches to the Strait, the pact creates a connective tissue between the Arabian Sea and the wider defense framework, raising the question of how a mutual-defense clause would be operationalized far from South Asia.

December 2024

On August 8, Turkey's defense minister announced that negotiations on the Mecca Pact had been running since December 2024, a timeline officials have cited to argue that the agreement predates recent regional flare-ups. This dating matters because it undermines the framing, common in some commentary, that the pact is a direct reaction to a single crisis. The negotiations appear to have matured across more than 18 months, during which Pakistan signed a separate bilateral defense agreement with Saudi Arabia in September 2025, also without publishing its text. The opacity of these texts has become a defining feature of the new alignment. Analysts note that the absence of a written, public document has fueled speculation about whether the pact is a binding mutual-defense treaty, a framework for cooperation, or a political signal. Until the text is released, observers are reading between the lines of presidential speeches and social media posts, including Trump's Truth Social message calling the pact a "great, brave, and important first step."

Gönül Tol

Gönül Tol, director of the Turkey Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, argues that Turkey's central objective is to secure funding for its defense industry and expand defense exports. Her reading frames the pact as an economic play, leveraging Pakistan's and Saudi Arabia's financial weight to underwrite Turkish defense production. Professor Serhat Guvenc takes a different view, treating the agreement as a new shape for Turkey's security relationships with the United States and Europe, particularly in light of Iran's ballistic missile attacks on Turkey and other regional states, which he notes were intercepted by US warships. The two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, but they point to different futures: a Turkey that becomes a defense supplier to a Sunni security bloc, or a Turkey that uses the pact to recalibrate its transatlantic ties while diversifying its security partnerships. For Pakistan, the strategic calculus turns on which Turkish model prevails, and how its own nuclear deterrent fits into a framework whose contents remain largely unstated.