Turkey's New Middle East Alliance Signals Caution on Defense Commitments

Hakan Fidan’s careful phrasing told the story. Turkey’s foreign minister described the new Mecca Joint Defence Agreement as “technically” similar to NATO’s Article 5, then added that any response to an attack would depend on “circumstances.” That single qualifier captured the ambiguity at the heart of a realignment now reshaping the Middle East and South Asia simultaneously.

Two distinct coalitions have taken shape. One binds Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey through the defence pact signed in August 2026, which stipulates that an attack on any signatory is an attack on all three. The other emerges from deepening ties between India, Israel and the UAE. Together, they signal a fundamental shift in how regional powers calculate their interests.

Pakistan’s position in the agreement reflects the country’s broader search for standing. With its economy under strain and domestic politics turbulent, the pact offers Islamabad a chance to project stability on a regional stage. The three nations stopped short of naming a common threat in writing, though many observers believe the agreement aims to deter Iran.

For Saudi Arabia, the shift is strategic. Gulf capitals, Riyadh in particular, have grown frustrated with Washington’s perceived reluctance to protect their sovereignty against Iranian attacks. By entering the agreement, Saudi Arabia signals that regional players are prepared to manage their own security. The pact also marks a remarkable reconciliation between Riyadh and Ankara, two powers that clashed over the Arab Spring, Egypt and Qatar, and endured a very public rupture after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. Iran and Israel have inadvertently drawn them back together.

Turkey’s motivations run deeper than security cooperation alone. Ankara views the agreement as a shield against Israel and, secondarily, Iran. The relationship between President Erdogan and Prime Minister Netanyahu is marked by profound personal animosity. Erdogan has called Netanyahu “a relative of Hitler,” while Netanyahu has labelled Erdogan a dictator. Beyond personal tensions, the two countries clash structurally. Israel’s recent military strike on Tehran alarmed Turkish defence circles. Erdogan harbors broader geopolitical ambitions, invoking Ottoman history and positioning Turkey as a power stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea. With NATO’s second-largest standing army, Turkey has made inroads in Pakistan, the Maldives and Bangladesh, and is building a naval base in Somalia. The defence pact could position Ankara as an Indo-Pacific player.

Turkey’s alignment with Pakistan also reflects shared ideological ground. Both nations openly promote political Islam, unlike Gulf counterparts such as Oman and the UAE. They co-produce weapons and technology, and Ankara supports Pakistan against India. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, maintain deep institutional links forged during the Cold War, when thousands of Pakistani officials served in Saudi Arabia as engineers, advisors and security personnel. Saudi officials were closely involved in supporting Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure.

A parallel realignment is reshaping the region. The UAE, Israel and India have quietly deepened their cooperation, forming what analyst Mohammed Soliman has termed the “Indo-Abrahamic” coalition, an informal trilateral group resting on strengthening bilateral relationships between all three states.

The UAE’s transformation into what some call the “Manhattan of the Middle East” has enabled this shift. Dubai and Abu Dhabi have become formidable centres of international capital, finance and shipping. Unlike Saudi Arabia, the UAE has embraced moderation and religious tolerance as explicit state policy, firmly opposing radical political Islam in Yemen, Egypt, Qatar and Pakistan. That commitment, Emirati officials suggest, stems from personal conviction among the leadership, not merely technocratic calculation.

Political moderation has made it easier for Abu Dhabi to cultivate relationships with non-Muslim majority states. The UAE normalised relations with Israel in 2020 through the US-brokered Abraham Accords. Despite Israel’s drastic actions in Gaza and South Lebanon, ties between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv have remained stable. Israel has even deployed its Iron Dome battery and Iron Beam laser defence system in the UAE, a development that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

India’s role marks a clear departure from its historical approach. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Israel in 2017, Netanyahu said: “Prime Minister, we’ve been waiting for you a long time, 70 years in fact.” Previous Indian governments cooperated with Israel but kept it largely hidden. Israeli diplomats in Delhi had long complained that India treated Israel like a mistress. Since 2014, that dynamic has reversed. Israeli-Indian cooperation now spans counter-terrorism, critical technologies and sophisticated military arms. The relationship between Abu Dhabi and Delhi rests on diaspora networks, counter-terror intelligence sharing, security cooperation, food security and bilateral investment.

Minilateral groupings including the I2U2 (India-Israel-UAE-United States) and the India-Cyprus-Greece-Israel alignment have added further layers. Absent from both are Turkey and Iran, two states that define their identity in opposition to Israel and maintain frosty relations with India, Cyprus, Greece and the UAE.

The picture is not cleanly binary. Delhi maintains reasonable relations with Riyadh despite Saudi Arabia’s historic support for Pakistan and new interest in Turkey. Saudi Arabia will likely not sacrifice its economic and political ties with India in the foreseeable future. Before October 7, 2023, Riyadh was also moving closer to Israel, though Israeli actions in Gaza have since complicated that trajectory. Egypt, with direct stakes in the Red Sea and Mediterranean, remains a significant variable.

The most critical uncertainty concerns the United States. Washington’s recent regional actions have been difficult to predict, leaving all parties uncertain. The US remains Israel’s most consequential security partner, and no amount of diplomatic hedging can obscure that reality. Israel’s partnerships with the UAE and India provide additional safeguards but cannot substitute for concrete American commitment.

Whether that commitment holds, and how Egypt ultimately positions itself, may determine which of these two axes carries more weight in the decade ahead.