A NEW BALANCE OF POWER IS EMERGING IN MECCA

Ersin Erçin

Ambassador (Ret.)

Some international agreements do not change the world on the day they are signed. Their significance lies instead in revealing the direction in which the world is already moving. The Mecca Mutual Defense Agreement between Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan should be understood in precisely those terms.

Its most consequential provision is the principle that an armed attack against any one of the three countries will be regarded as an attack against the others. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has described this arrangement as technically analogous, in its collective-defense logic, to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.

That comparison, however, should not be taken too far. It would be misleading to conclude that a new NATO has suddenly been created in Mecca. NATO rests on more than seven decades of institutional experience, an integrated military command, established defense planning, predetermined force structures, and the military capabilities of the most powerful alliance in modern history. The Mecca framework, by contrast, is only beginning to take shape.

Yet it would be equally mistaken to dismiss the agreement as another routine declaration of defense cooperation. Its proposed institutional architecture suggests that Ankara, Riyadh, and Islamabad intend to move beyond political symbolism.

Under the emerging framework, political and military mechanisms will bring together the three countries’ foreign and defense ministers and chiefs of general staff. Strategic guidance set by national leaders is expected to be translated into concrete decisions through these bodies. A permanent secretariat, headquartered in Saudi Arabia, will oversee implementation. Joint military exercises, training programs, and other forms of operational cooperation are also envisaged.

In other words, the three governments have done more than promise to defend one another in a future crisis. They have begun constructing the institutional machinery that could eventually make that promise credible. That is what gives the agreement significance beyond the text itself.

A Collective Defense Pact—But Not an Automatic War Machine

Information released about the agreement’s implementation also clarifies an important safeguard. Collective assistance is not expected to mean the automatic dispatch of troops whenever a crisis occurs.

The country under attack would first have to request assistance and specify what kind of support it requires. That assistance could range from intelligence sharing and logistical support to ammunition and military supplies. Under more serious circumstances, it could ultimately extend to a request for combat forces.

This distinction matters. It preserves political discretion even within a collective-defense commitment and reduces the risk that one member could automatically drag the others into war.

Nor does the agreement, at least at this stage, identify a common enemy or codify a specific shared threat. Ankara’s official position has been explicit: countries that do not attack the members of the pact are not its targets.

Preserving this defensive character will be essential both to the agreement’s credibility and to Türkiye’s diplomatic room for maneuver. Iran, Israel, India, or any other state should therefore not be prematurely designated as the enemy of a supposed “Mecca alliance.”

The more consequential development is something else: for the first time, Türkiye’s considerable military capabilities and increasingly sophisticated defense industry, Saudi Arabia’s financial power, and Pakistan’s large armed forces and nuclear status are being brought together within a common framework of collective defense.

That combination deserves attention.

The World That Made Mecca Possible

The geopolitical conditions behind the agreement have been developing for years.

The U.S.-centered international order that dominated the first three decades after the Cold War has been steadily eroding. The United States remains the world’s most powerful military actor, but it no longer appears willing to carry open-ended security burdens in every region on the scale it once did. Washington is pressing European allies to assume greater responsibility for their own defense, seeking where possible to reduce the costs of its Middle Eastern commitments, and directing increasing strategic attention toward China and the Indo-Pacific.

Like most geopolitical vacuums, the space created by this retrenchment is being filled.

Regional powers are becoming less willing to entrust their security exclusively to guarantees from Washington, Moscow, or any other outside power. They are building new partnerships among themselves and, where necessary, new security arrangements.

The Mecca agreement is one manifestation of this broader redistribution of responsibility and power.

For the same reason, describing the arrangement as an “Islamic NATO” is premature, while portraying it as a “Sunni bloc” imposes a sectarian interpretation on what is fundamentally a geopolitical development.

The first label assumes a degree of military institutionalization that does not yet exist. The second attributes a religious identity to a security arrangement that neither defines a sectarian enemy nor identifies a common religious threat. Indeed, the possibility that Iran could eventually participate would fundamentally undermine the argument that the mechanism is designed as an anti-Shia or Sunni geopolitical front.

What the Mecca framework ultimately becomes will therefore be determined not by the labels attached to it today but by three questions: Who joins it? Whom does it eventually define as a threat? And how does it behave when one of its members actually faces a crisis?

Türkiye’s Expanding Strategic Geography

Türkiye’s participation is particularly revealing.

Ankara remains one of NATO’s most militarily capable members, yet its security horizon increasingly extends beyond NATO’s traditional geography. Critics at home and abroad have often interpreted such moves as evidence of Türkiye’s drift away from the West or of an impending geopolitical “axis shift.”

That interpretation is too simplistic.

Türkiye’s geography makes a genuinely one-dimensional foreign policy increasingly difficult. The Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Balkans, the eastern Mediterranean, Syria, Iraq, the Gulf, Central Asia, and increasingly the Indian Ocean are becoming parts of the same strategic landscape. Türkiye has political, economic, and security interests across all of them.

There is therefore no inherent contradiction between remaining a NATO ally and developing security relationships outside NATO. What is new is that this approach is becoming more systematic and more institutionalized.

The Mecca agreement should thus be understood less as a departure from NATO than as part of Türkiye’s attempt to widen its strategic room for maneuver while remaining inside the alliance. Ankara is not necessarily abandoning its place in the West. It is expanding its options beyond it.

This is strategic diversification rather than geopolitical defection.

Washington’s Dilemma

Washington’s response is likely to be ambivalent.

For years, successive U.S. administrations have demanded that allies and partners assume a greater share of their own security burdens. The message repeatedly delivered to Europe—spend more, build greater capacity, and become less dependent on American protection—has obvious parallels in the Middle East.

From this perspective, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan assuming greater responsibility for regional security need not conflict with American interests.

But there is a fundamental difference between burden-sharing and strategic autonomy.

A regional security mechanism capable of operating without the United States may be useful to Washington. A political-military center capable, under certain circumstances, of acting against U.S. preferences would be a different matter entirely.

The future American attitude toward the Mecca framework will depend heavily on which of these two models emerges.

Europe’s Strategic Paradox

Europe faces a similar dilemma.

The war in Ukraine and the deterioration of the continent’s security environment have exposed deficiencies in European military capacity and renewed recognition of Türkiye’s importance to European defense. A Turkish role in building security networks that contribute to regional stability may therefore not be viewed entirely negatively in Brussels.

But if the Mecca framework develops a permanent secretariat, functioning political and military councils, regular exercises, and an expanding membership, European policymakers will eventually confront a larger question: Is Türkiye helping construct a security architecture complementary to Europe’s, or is Ankara gradually building a second strategic sphere centered on itself?

Türkiye’s expanding defense industry, potential joint ventures backed by Gulf capital, and institutionalized military cooperation with Pakistan will reinforce another conclusion in European capitals: Turkish “strategic autonomy” is no longer merely diplomatic rhetoric.

Europe may increasingly find itself confronting a paradox. It wants access to Türkiye’s military capacity while remaining uneasy about the geopolitical autonomy that this same capacity gives Ankara.

Moscow’s Red Line

Russia will probably take a more pragmatic view.

For Moscow, Türkiye is already an actor that resists conventional geopolitical categories. It is a NATO member that maintains extensive energy, commercial, and diplomatic relations with Russia. Ankara and Moscow can find themselves on opposing sides of regional conflicts while simultaneously maintaining working channels from the Black Sea to Syria.

Russia’s principal concern will therefore be geographical.

If the Mecca framework eventually extends its political or military reach into the Caucasus or Central Asia, areas Moscow continues to regard as part of its traditional sphere of influence, Russian attitudes could harden significantly. If the arrangement remains concentrated on the Gulf, the Middle East, and South Asia and retains a defensive character, however, Moscow has less reason to interpret it as a direct threat.

Athens and Türkiye’s Expanding Reach

Greece is likely to view the agreement through a different lens.

For decades, Athens has tended to assess Turkish military power primarily through the balance in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean. But the Mecca agreement illustrates how far Türkiye’s strategic scale has expanded beyond that framework.

The deeper concern for Greece may therefore be not the three-country pact itself but the broader network of Turkish defense relationships surrounding it: close military cooperation with Azerbaijan, Türkiye’s military presence in Qatar, its activities in Somalia, its security relationship with Libya, and its growing influence in the Balkans and Central Asia.

Seen together with the emerging Saudi-Pakistani mechanism, these relationships demonstrate that Türkiye’s military and strategic reach now extends far beyond the Aegean.

Athens may attempt to translate that development into another argument against Ankara within the European Union. But doing so will not alter the underlying strategic reality: Türkiye is increasingly operating on a geopolitical scale larger than the bilateral Greek-Turkish balance.

Riyadh’s Strategic Diversification

For Saudi Arabia, the significance of the agreement may be greater than is immediately apparent.

For decades, Riyadh defined its security primarily through the American umbrella. Recent crises, however, have generated doubts about the predictability and durability of U.S. security guarantees.

Saudi Arabia is not responding by abandoning Washington. It is pursuing something more pragmatic: diversification.

Riyadh is preserving its strategic relationship with the United States, expanding its economic ties with China, drawing on Türkiye’s defense-industrial capabilities, and deepening its historic military relationship with Pakistan.

Locating the new mechanism’s permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia would also give Riyadh an institutional role at the center of an emerging regional security architecture. That is politically significant in its own right.

The Nuclear Question

Pakistan is perhaps the most strategically sensitive component of the triangle.

It possesses not only one of the world’s largest and most experienced armed forces but also nuclear weapons. Its participation will therefore inevitably raise questions about nuclear deterrence.

The Mecca agreement does not mean that Türkiye and Saudi Arabia have automatically entered under a Pakistani nuclear umbrella. Such an arrangement would require far more extensive political, doctrinal, command-and-control, and military commitments than a general collective-defense treaty.

But deterrence depends on perceptions as well as formal commitments.

Pakistan’s nuclear status inevitably adds psychological weight to the new framework. Even without an explicit nuclear guarantee, potential adversaries will have to factor Pakistan’s strategic capabilities into their calculations.

That ambiguity itself may have deterrent value.

Iran, Israel, and the Regional Balance

Iran will inevitably watch implementation closely.

Geography alone explains why. Türkiye lies to Iran’s west, Pakistan to its east, and Saudi Arabia across the Gulf. A security relationship linking those three states will naturally raise questions in Tehran.

Turning the Mecca framework into an explicitly anti-Iranian coalition, however, would not serve Türkiye’s interests.

Türkiye and Iran compete across several theaters, but they have also shared the same geopolitical neighborhood for centuries. Ankara’s strategic interest is not the encirclement of Iran but the management of competition through deterrence, balance, and dialogue.

Similarly, it would be mistaken to describe the agreement as an anti-Israeli military alliance.

Yet Israel cannot be expected to ignore it. If Turkish military technology and operational experience, Saudi financial resources, and Pakistani strategic weight eventually produce meaningful defense integration, a substantial new variable will have entered the Middle Eastern balance of power.

That does not make confrontation inevitable. It does mean that regional calculations will change.

The Indian Problem

For Türkiye, one of the agreement’s most delicate dimensions concerns India.

Any collective-defense mechanism involving Pakistan must clearly define how disputes over Kashmir and other Indo-Pakistani conflicts fit within its obligations. A future military confrontation between India and Pakistan must not automatically create a Turkish military commitment in a war where Türkiye’s vital security interests are not directly at stake.

This is the classic problem of alliance entrapment: a security arrangement designed to strengthen a state can instead draw it into conflicts generated by another member’s rivalries.

For Ankara, preventing such an outcome should be a central objective when the agreement’s implementation rules and political decision-making procedures are developed.

The China Factor

China adds another layer of complexity.

Pakistan is one of Beijing’s closest strategic partners. Saudi Arabia’s economic and energy relationship with China is expanding rapidly. Türkiye, while remaining a NATO member, is also seeking to deepen its relationship with Beijing.

The Mecca triangle therefore does not fit the familiar bloc politics of the Cold War.

But that is precisely the point.

The emerging international system allows a country to belong to NATO, trade extensively with China, maintain an energy relationship with Russia, build defense partnerships with Gulf states, and remain indispensable to European security—all at the same time.

Such arrangements may appear contradictory when viewed through a twentieth-century lens. In an increasingly multipolar world, they are becoming normal.

What Happens if Egypt Joins?

Statements that Egypt could eventually participate deserve particular attention.

A mechanism bringing Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt into the same defense framework would no longer be adequately described as trilateral cooperation. It would connect military powers across an arc stretching from the eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea through the Gulf and toward the Indian Ocean.

Moreover, indications that other countries have expressed interest suggest that the Mecca agreement may have been conceived not simply as a closed trilateral pact but as the nucleus of an expandable security architecture.

That increases its strategic potential.

It also increases the risks for Türkiye.

Alliances generate power, but they also generate obligations.

The Risks for Ankara

Türkiye could derive significant strategic benefits from the Mecca framework, but four risks deserve particular attention.

The first is entrapment in regional disputes that do not directly involve Turkish national security. An India-Pakistan conflict is the clearest example, but future members could bring their own border disputes, rivalries, and threat perceptions into the organization.

The second is the possibility of tension between Türkiye’s commitments under the Mecca framework and its obligations as a NATO member. Such contradictions might appear manageable in legal documents. In an actual war, they could become far more difficult.

The third is paradoxical. Türkiye could enter the mechanism to expand its strategic autonomy only to discover that the obligations of membership constrain that autonomy. Joining an alliance does not simply mean that others promise to defend you. It means that their security problems become, to some extent, your own.

The fourth risk is enlargement itself. As membership grows, so does the geographical area Türkiye may be expected to help defend. At the same time, the number of competing threat perceptions within the organization will increase.

For Ankara, the central challenge is therefore to develop the Mecca agreement into a strong but carefully controlled collective-defense mechanism.

The requirement that assistance begin at the request of the country under attack, the ability to tailor assistance to the specific crisis, and the central role of political and military councils are important safeguards. Türkiye should also preserve its own constitutional procedures and sovereign political discretion, particularly over the deployment of combat forces.

Good alliances expand a country’s options. Poorly designed alliances force countries to fight other nations’ wars.

A Game Changer?

Does all of this make the Mecca agreement a geopolitical game changer?

Not yet.

Institutions matter more than declarations.

If the ministerial political mechanism becomes operational; if the military structure involving the chiefs of general staff develops real defense planning capabilities; if the Saudi-based permanent secretariat functions effectively; and if joint training and military exercises become regular features of the relationship, then the three countries will have created something more significant than a defense treaty. They will have begun building a new security organization.

If Egypt and other major regional states subsequently join, its geopolitical weight could become considerably greater.

The signatures in Mecca therefore do not yet represent an alternative to NATO, nor do they announce the birth of a new military bloc.

But they may mark the first institutional foundations of a strategic corridor stretching from Ankara through Riyadh to Islamabad.

The larger significance of the agreement lies here. The emerging international order will not necessarily be divided into two rigid camps. It is more likely to consist of overlapping alliances, flexible partnerships, regional security arrangements, and states belonging simultaneously to several strategic networks.

Mecca may be an early indication of that world.

The maps have not changed. The alliances are multiplying. And power is slowly changing hands.

Ersin Erçin is a retired Turkish ambassador and a former senior diplomat with extensive experience in European and Asian security affairs.