Turkey joining the mutual defence pact signed between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan could pave the way for a major shift in the Middle East’s balance of power.
Talks are underway to bring Turkey into a mutual defence pact signed last September between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, a move that could mark one of the most ambiguous shifts in the Middle East’s evolving security architecture.
According to Bloomberg, negotiations are at an advanced stage, and a deal is considered likely, potentially expanding an agreement that frames any aggression against one member as an attack on all – language that has inevitably invited comparisons to NATO’s Article 5.
Turkish officials, however, have been careful to temper expectations. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has confirmed that discussions with Riyadh and Islamabad are ongoing, while stressing that no agreement has yet been signed.
That dual messaging captures the nature of the initiative itself: not the emergence of a rigid military bloc, but an attempt to formalise overlapping security interests amid regional volatility and growing doubts about the reliability of external security guarantees.
For Ankara, the attraction of the Saudi–Pakistan pact lies less in automatic defence commitments than in strategic signalling and flexibility. Joining or loosely associating with the pact would allow Turkey to widen its regional security footprint without severing ties to NATO or locking itself into binding obligations.
Whether this translates into a meaningful shift in regional deterrence will depend less on treaty language than on how the arrangement is applied across contested theatres, and on how key actors, particularly Israel and the UAE, choose to respond.
From historical ties to strategic hedging
At its core, the Saudi–Pakistan defence pact that Turkey is now reportedly seeking to join is not a new creation, but the institutionalisation of a long-standing security relationship. Signed in Riyadh in September, the agreement formalised decades of military cooperation between the kingdom and Pakistan, embedding it in a mutual defence framework without introducing integrated command structures or automatic military triggers.
What makes the current moment notable is not the existence of cooperation, but the decision to place it under a mutual defence clause. Turkish interest would introduce a third major regional military power into the arrangement, transforming it from a Saudi-Pakistani pact into a looser triangular framework.
Yet despite the “one for all, all for one” rhetoric, the agreement falls well short of a NATO-style guarantee. Rather, it would extend an existing web of bilateral defence relationships into a looser, triangular format that preserves political discretion while projecting unity.
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As Eleonora Ardemagni, Senior Associate Research Fellow at ISPI, notes, the logic behind a possible Turkish entry is primarily about signalling rather than bloc-building.
“The possible expansion of the Saudi–Pakistan mutual defence pact to Turkey, or a less binding cooperation formula linking Ankara to the pact, would be primarily related to Israel’s containment,” she told The New Arab.
In her view, Saudi Arabia elevated its long-standing military ties with Pakistan in 2025 to “complement US decreasing Gulf deterrence and to contain Israel’s rising military assertiveness in the Middle East”.
Allowing Turkey to join now would follow the same strategic rationale, particularly as Ankara seeks to deter Israeli military activity in Syria.
Timing reinforces that interpretation. The Saudi–Pakistan pact was finalised amid heightened regional anxiety following Israeli military actions that reverberated well beyond Gaza, and against a backdrop of uncertainty over Washington’s willingness to underwrite regional security.
For Riyadh, codifying security ties with a nuclear-armed partner offered a form of strategic insurance; for Islamabad, it reinforced a relationship that delivers financial support and diplomatic backing without deep entanglement in Middle Eastern conflicts.
For Ankara, the attraction is twofold. Turkey and Pakistan’s defence relationship is already among Ankara’s most mature non-Western partnerships. Turkey has supplied Pakistan with naval platforms, upgraded aircraft, expanded joint military exercises, and deepened cooperation on drones and related systems.
These ties have gradually evolved from arms sales into co-production and strategic coordination, making Pakistan a low-risk partner from Ankara’s perspective.
Saudi Arabia fills a different role. Over the past five years, Ankara has deliberately rebuilt ties with Riyadh after a period of deep rupture, recognising the kingdom’s growing weight as a diplomatic broker and economic hub.
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Turkish officials increasingly view Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as a regional actor with privileged access to the White House – an asset Ankara believes could help soften frictions with Washington at a time when Turkey’s position within NATO remains contested. Together, they provide a framework through which Ankara can hedge against strategic uncertainty without assuming binding defence obligations.
This logic helps explain Turkey’s caution. As Fidan has emphasised, discussions remain exploratory. Ankara wants the benefits of association without the constraints of automatic commitments. In that sense, the pact is best understood not as a fixed security bloc, but as a flexible platform for political signalling – one that can be activated or downplayed depending on the theatre and the moment.
The growing convergence of Turkish and Saudi visions
Turkey’s recalibration toward Saudi Arabia is rooted in hard lessons drawn from the post-Arab Spring decade. Ankara’s early strategy of backing movements seeking to overthrow central governments consistently undercut its own interests.
In Syria, state collapse pushed millions of refugees into Turkey and enabled the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish region along its border. In Libya, the breakdown of authority cost Turkish companies billions in suspended contracts. Regionally, the policy left Ankara isolated and increasingly dependent on Gulf capital it could no longer access.
Since 2020, Turkey has adjusted course. It has shifted toward backing strong central governments, rolled back support for Muslim Brotherhood–aligned movements, and repaired ties with Gulf powers. Ankara now sees stabilisation through trade, investment, and infrastructure integration as essential to both economic recovery and diplomatic influence.
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This approach increasingly overlaps with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 strategy. Riyadh has moved away from confrontational regional politics toward de-escalation and state-centred stabilisation, repairing ties with Qatar, normalising relations with Turkey, reaching a China-brokered understanding with Iran, and seeking to manage tensions in Yemen.
In multiple theatres, Turkish policy has followed the same trajectory – sometimes in concert with Saudi Arabia, in other cases parallel to it, but crucially moving in the same direction.
In Yemen, Turkey has aligned with Saudi Arabia’s emphasis on unity and territorial integrity, calibrating its stance in line with its broader relations with Gulf powers. In Syria, Ankara and Riyadh have converged behind the new government in Damascus, both viewing strong central authority as indispensable – for Turkey to address the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) issue and refugee repatriation, and for Saudi Arabia to curb Iranian influence and regional spillover.
The same logic applies in Sudan, where both back the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, whose country is mired in internal conflict with the UAE-supported Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and in Libya, where Riyadh appears increasingly inclined to work with the Tripoli government, a quiet realignment closer to Turkey’s long-standing position.
In Somalia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are similarly aligned in supporting the federal government, combining security assistance – Ankara’s largest overseas military base, TURKSOM, is in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu – with long-term development and infrastructure investment along a corridor critical to Red Sea maritime security. Across these theatres, convergence is driven less by ideology than by shared interest in stabilising fragile states that sit astride key trade routes linking the Gulf, the Red Sea, and Africa.
Pakistan’s role in this theatre is more indirect but still relevant, as Islamabad is increasingly leveraging defence exports for economic and strategic gain across the Middle East and Africa. In December, Pakistan signed a $4 billion deal to sell military equipment – including 16 JF-17 fighter jets – to Libya’s eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA).
Reuters has also reported talks with Saudi Arabia to convert around $2 billion in Saudi loans into a JF-17 purchase, further binding Pakistan’s defence industry to Riyadh. More recently, and in a sign of Pakistan’s growing alignment with Ankara and Riyadh, Islamabad is close to sealing a $1.5 billion arms deal with Sudan’s army. The package would reportedly include Karakorum-8 light-attack aircraft, drones, and air defence systems.
Israel, the UAE, and the limits of a new alignment
This emerging convergence has fuelled claims that Turkey’s reported interest in the Saudi-Pakistan pact signals the formation of an anti-Israel or anti-UAE axis. The reality is more nuanced.
Ardemagni cautions against reading Ankara’s move primarily through an anti-UAE lens. While Saudi Arabia’s efforts to assemble “like-minded” coalitions may intensify competition with Abu Dhabi, she argues that “with the exception of Somalia and Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan’s growing cooperation with Riyadh will not affect their bilateral relations with the UAE”.
All three, she notes, have a strong interest in preserving economic and financial ties with Abu Dhabi – from Emirati investments in Turkey to trade agreements with Egypt and Pakistan.
Recent developments underscore this dynamic. On 19 January, UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed visited New Delhi, where he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed a letter of intent aimed at deepening defence and security cooperation, including industrial collaboration and maritime security.
While framed as part of the broader UAE–India strategic partnership, the timing was notable. For Ankara and Riyadh, the visit underscored Abu Dhabi’s parallel effort to consolidate its own network of security partners across the Indian Ocean and South Asia – a space where Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are also seeking to expand influence.
From Israel’s perspective, however, the picture looks more troubling. Gallia Lindenstrauss, Senior Research Fellow at Israel’s INSS, remains sceptical that Turkey would enter “a mutual defence arrangement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that will have a binding commitment”. Such a move, she argues, would be problematic both because Turkey is a NATO member and because it would contradict Ankara’s emphasis on self-defence and its drive to build an autonomous defence industry.
Israel is also closely watching Pakistan’s role. “Israel, like other countries, is monitoring the defence cooperation between Muslim countries and Pakistan due to the latter’s nuclear capabilities,” Lindenstrauss warns, arguing that such dynamics could exacerbate regional proliferation pressures.
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She notes that Israel is not alone in its concerns, pointing to India and the UAE, both of which have responded by strengthening their own defence ties.
For Ankara, however, the calculus remains pragmatic rather than ideological. As Gönül Tol, Senior Fellow at MEI, writes, Turkey’s strategy is not to choose between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, but to keep both relationships intact.
Ankara’s post-2020 recalibration was driven by a hard-earned lesson: isolation from Gulf capital carries steep economic and diplomatic costs. As a result, Turkey increasingly favours flexible, interest-based alignments that expand its influence without closing doors elsewhere.
Francesco Salesio Schiavi is an Italian specialist in the Middle East. His focus lies in the security architecture of the Levant and the Gulf, with a particular emphasis on Iraq, Iran, and the Arab Peninsula, as well as military and diplomatic interventions by international actors
