Saudi-Pakistan-Turkiye pact: A new shield or strategic signal?

Islamabad, Pakistan – Three folders – two in green and one in crimson red – changed hands beneath a portrait of Saudi King Salman at al-Safa Palace in Mecca on Friday.

Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkiye’s president, and Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, held them up for the cameras, the ink still fresh on the pages inside.

The signatures of the three leaders had just bound Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan to the “Makkah Joint Defence Agreement”, which treats an attack on any one of the countries as an attack on all three.

The mutual defence pact , which does not name a specific threat, was signed more than five months into the United States-Israel war on Iran, a conflict that has pulled missile and drone fire onto Gulf oil exporters, including Saudi Arabia, and shut down much of the Strait of Hormuz.

It builds on a bilateral Saudi Arabia-Pakistan pact signed less than a year ago, now widened to include Turkiye’s defence industry and NATO-standard military.

Sharif called it a “shield of peace” for the region, while Erdogan said the pact “does not target any country” and remains “open to the participation of all brotherly countries seeking peace, prosperity and stability”. Saudi officials also stressed the agreement does not pose any threat to regional security and does not come at the expense of the kingdom’s ties with other allies, including the US and Gulf countries.

Still, the pact’s signing has raised questions about the region’s changing power dynamics.

Muhammad Faisal, a security and foreign policy analyst, said the agreement’s value “lies in creating uncertainty for adversaries and strengthening collective deterrence, rather than specifying fixed military obligations similar to Western alliances”.