Make many out of three: Türkiye wants to expand new military pact

Defense alliance

Make many out of three: Türkiye wants to expand new military pact

“External powers do not solve the problems”: Turkey is forging a defense pact with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – and wants to involve even more countries in the future. NATO serves as a model.

If the Turkish government has its way, the defense alliance that has just been launched should go with it Pakistan and Saudi Arabia be expanded to include additional countries. That is the President’s express wish Recep Tayyip Erdogansaid Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to the state news agency Anadolu. “Under our president’s vision, we should not limit ourselves to three countries. We should grow and, if necessary, bring all countries under this umbrella.” Several countries have already signaled interest – and he believes that they will in the long term too Egypt will join as soon as “some technical hurdles” have been overcome.

The Türkiye have good relations with almost all countries in the region, emphasized Fidan. But without an institutional framework, this could change at any time. The “historic” agreement is a milestone on the path to lasting stability in a region that was characterized by instability after the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922. Turkey and its neighbors must create their own institutional mechanisms to guarantee security, economic stability, development and prosperity. “External powers coming into the region do not solve the problems. They only make them worse, and the costs become very high.”

The nuclear power Pakistan, the influential Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the… NATO Türkiye, which belongs to Turkey, founded the defense alliance for mutual support on Friday – at a time when tensions in the Gulf are rising sharply. The “Mecca Defense Pact” was signed in the Saudi Arabian city of the same name by the countries’ heads of state and government and is intended to serve common security interests.

According to the alliance partners, from now on every armed attack on one of them will be viewed as an attack on all three states. Further details about the contents of the pact or the specific structure of mutual aid in the event of an attack were not known.

Fidan drew a comparison with the mutual assistance clause in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, with which the NATO states also guarantee each other support in the event of an attack and thus deter potential enemies. Each of the three countries in the Mecca Defense Pact can request different types of support depending on the threat situation – from intelligence assistance, logistics and ammunition to military units. There will also be similarities to NATO in the command structure, said Fidan.

Last but not least, the alliance is concerned with ensuring that the armed forces of the member states can work together effectively, even if they are organized differently. The minister explained that joint training of soldiers, exercise maneuvers and, above all, armaments cooperation would also be part of it.