In less than two weeks, Turkey has taken two notable steps in building a network of regional defence alliances: its parliament ratified the “Mecca Agreement” with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan on 5 November, and on Friday it signed a joint defence agreement with Qatar in Istanbul.
What is the Mecca Agreement? The three countries signed it in Mecca on 7 August 2026. It states that any external attack on one country is an attack on all members, obliging them to provide military support to each other. With Ankara’s ratification, all three have completed their domestic procedures, and the agreement enters into force once the instruments of ratification are deposited with the “Political and Defence Strategic Committee”.
Why is Ankara moving? Turkey champions the principle of “regional ownership”: that the region’s problems should be solved by its own states. During the parliamentary debate, Deputy Foreign Minister Levent Gümrükçü said the signatories “chose not to wait for solutions from outside” and took the first step towards a regional security system.
What about NATO? The agreement places Turkey, a NATO member, in a new military alliance outside the bloc, prompting objections from Turkish opposition parties that questioned the consequences of the new commitments and how they overlap with NATO obligations.
What next? The Qatar agreement, whose terms have not been published, comes amid rising Gulf tensions. Together these steps reflect a shift towards multilateral security arrangements among regional powers rather than full reliance on outside umbrellas, but their real test will lie in coordination and implementation, not in the texts.
Source: BBC Arabic, Reuters
