Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan will sign a joint defense agreement in Mecca on Friday, sources with knowledge of the matter said, amid regional turmoil with Gulf states coming under fire from Iran after it was attacked by the US and Israel. While the pact further cements a burgeoning grouping of major Sunni Muslim powers allied with the United States, there was no immediate clarity on each state’s commitments or how it might affect the wider crisis in the Middle East. Two regional sources with direct knowledge of the matter said the deal would be signed on Friday, which was later confirmed by a Turkish official. Another regional source said it was not clear whether the agreement would also be publicly announced on Friday.
The three nations share growing concerns over Middle East chaos and the role of revolutionary Shi’ite Iran and an increasingly assertive Israel, as the United States struggles to contain regional threats. Turkey has NATO’s second-largest military. Saudi Arabia, the strongest Gulf state, is home to Islam’s holiest sites and one of the world’s top oil exporters, while Pakistan is the only nuclear-armed Muslim country.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, accompanied by powerful army chief Asim Munir, arrived in Jeddah on Thursday and performed the Umrah pilgrimage in Mecca. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan departed for Jeddah on Friday. They will meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose country has been repeatedly struck by Iran, as well as by Tehran’s Houthi allies in Yemen and Shi’ite militia in Iraq, since the war began on February 28. The conflict has also exposed Gulf states’ security vulnerabilities and disrupted shipping the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas transited prior to the war.
