I have read a lot of defence statements over the years and most of them are gone from memory within a week. Not sure this one will be. When Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye stood together in Makkah after Friday prayers and signed a pact that says an attack on one is an attack on all three, it did not feel like the start of something. It felt more like three countries finally writing down what had already been true for years.
Pakistan’s part in this deserves more attention than it usually gets. It is still the only nuclear armed state in the Muslim world, with somewhere around 170 warheads by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists count. That is not a small thing to bring to a table like this, it is protection that no amount of money can substitute for. And Pakistan has shown up before, not just in speeches. Over 11,000 troops were sent to defend Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War in 1990 and 91, and the two countries have kept trainers and advisers moving back and forth ever since, a relationship that traces back to a defence protocol from December 1982. When former army chief Raheel Sharif was picked to head the 42 nation Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition, that told me something too, the wider Muslim world already trusted Pakistani leadership on security matters before any of this was signed.
Saudi Arabia’s contribution is almost too large to summarise properly. As custodian of the two holy mosques, Riyadh holds a kind of moral standing no other capital can claim, and it has money behind that standing too, close to 78 billion dollars in its 2025 defence budget alone, the fifth highest in the world and the highest in the Arab world by a wide margin. Riyadh has stood by Pakistan through some hard years, and now under Vision 2030 it is trying to build its own defence industry, with a target of producing half its military equipment at home by the end of the decade. That is not just a rich country spending freely. It looks like a country trying to build something that lasts.
Turkiye adds a piece the other two do not have on their own. It runs NATO’s second largest army, close to 355,000 active troops, more than any European member state fields alone, and its defence industry now sells drones and armoured vehicles on several continents. Erdogan chose to base the pact on Article 51 of the UN Charter, which I do not think was an accident either, it is a way of saying this alliance is meant to run on law rather than show, and that any brotherly nation is welcome to join later.
What stays with me most is the image of the three leaders praying together before any paper was signed. Faith first, agreement after, in that order. Pakistan brings the deterrence, Saudi Arabia brings the money and the religious weight, Turkiye brings battle tested military strength and industry. None of the three is weak on its own. But put together like this, it feels like the Muslim world finally has a security structure it has needed for a long time and did not have until now.