‘Islamic NATO’ is a Turkish power play

For Ankara, the Mecca pact is a way to turn military weight, Gulf money and regional reach into leverage On August 7, in the Al-Safa Palace in Mecca, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in signing an agreement whose consequences may prove far greater than its deliberately restrained language suggests.The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement commits the three countries to regard an armed attack against one of them as an attack against all, placing collective defense at the heart of a relationship previously built through bilateral military cooperation, arms sales, training and political coordination. For Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the pact extends a defense relationship already formalized in 2025. For Türkiye, however, Mecca represents something more ambitious. Ankara is not searching for another protector. It is seeking a larger table at which it can help decide what the next Middle Eastern order will look like.Türkiye enters this arrangement from a position unlike that of almost any other regional state. It already commands NATO’s second-largest military, has built an increasingly sophisticated d...