Overview
- Leaders signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement in Mecca on Friday, August 7, formalizing a trilateral defence platform between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
- The agreement states that any armed attack on one signatory will be treated as an attack on all three, and it pledges to strengthen collective deterrence and defence cooperation.
- Officials said the pact will enable closer military work including joint exercises, training, technology transfers and intelligence sharing, though detailed implementation plans and timelines have not yet been finalized.
- All three governments described the pact as defensive, said it does not target a specific country, and indicated it does not replace existing bilateral or multilateral commitments while remaining open to other 'brotherly' states joining.
- The deal builds on a September 2025 Saudi‑Pakistan mutual defence pact and recent Pakistani deployments to Saudi Arabia and could change regional deterrence dynamics, affect security of shipping routes in the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea, and raise questions about how Turkey’s NATO membership will interact with the new trilateral framework.