ANKARA – Turkey’s foreign minister said Saturday that a new defense pact linking Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey is not directed at Iran or any other nation, casting the agreement instead as a move designed to strengthen security and stability across the region.
The agreement was signed Friday in the Saudi holy city of Mecca by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Under its central provision, an attack on any one of the three countries would be treated as an attack on all of them.
Known as the “Mecca Joint Defense Agreement,” the pact unites oil-rich Saudi Arabia, nuclear-armed Pakistan and Turkey, a NATO member with the alliance’s second-largest military and an expanding domestic defense industry. The deal is intended to deepen strategic cooperation and bolster deterrence at a moment of heightened regional uncertainty and security risks linked to the war in Iran.
Speaking in an interview with Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stressed that the three partners do not regard any specific country as an enemy unless that country acts aggressively toward them.
“We don’t have anything written down — nothing we’ve signed — that defines a common threat,” Fidan said. “Any country that does not attack us is not a target for us.”
Fidan said the mutual defense language in the agreement is “technically the same” as NATO’s Article 5, the collective defense principle stating that an attack on one of the alliance’s 32 members is considered an attack on all.
Asked how the arrangement would be put into practice, Fidan explained that a member state would first have to formally seek assistance. The response from the other two countries could then vary, ranging from intelligence sharing and logistical backing to the deployment of military units, depending on the nature of the threat.
“These are multi‑layered matters that vary according to the scale of the threat,” Fidan said. “This is the perspective we have set out so far in our work.”
The Turkish minister said other nations — which he did not name — have expressed interest in joining the agreement, adding that he expects Egypt, which he described as a “natural partner,” to participate “at the next stage.”
Under the deal, the foreign and defense ministers of the three countries, along with their military chiefs, would hold regular committee meetings. The three countries would also establish a secretariat, to be based in Saudi Arabia, Fidan said.
