A “tectonic shift” has taken place in the geopolitics of the Middle East, said Ilker Sezer in Türkiye Today (Istanbul). On 7 August, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan formed “the holy grail of military alliances”, with the three Sunni Muslim nations vowing that “an armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all”. That clause of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, named after the holy city where the treaty was signed, is the “Islamic equivalent of Nato’s Article 5”.
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