Turkey and Pakistan have declared that they are in the process of finalising plans for a tripartite defence partnership with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a report said. The announcement came on Thursday amidst the unrest in Iran and rumours of US intervention over the brutal crackdown on protestors by the Islamic regime.
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As things stand, the particulars of the deal remain unknown. The proposed deal is not likely to include a clause that demands mandatory mutual support in the event of an armed conflict, the report said. In September 2025, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a defence pact under which any aggression against either country shall be considered as an act of aggression against both. The 'Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement' was signed during Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's state visit to Riyadh. According to reports, this defence deal between the two sides is unrelated to the three-party partnership now being discussed.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s Defence Production Minister Raza Hayat Harraj told Reuters that the idea was not immediate but was "something that is already in the pipeline." Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, meanwhile, said on Thursday that negotiations with regional states have been under way since early last year. The minister stopped short of naming the other players involved, the South China Morning Post said in a report on Friday. "Although an agreement had yet to be reached, Fidan said the proposed security mechanism would act as a shared platform for 'all regional nations', whose issues could be resolved if they could 'be sure of each other'," the report read.
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However, the report added that a deal involving these three nations will contain complex challenges requiring extra attention to resolve, despite their numerous shared interests. Simply put, the priorities of the three are not the same.
While Islamabad's defence needs concern matching New Delhi's might, apart from fighting terrorism and increasing border frictions with Afghanistan, Ankara is more worried about Syria and NATO-related issues. As far as Riyadh is concerned, Yemen cannot be ignored, along with Iran and Israel. They are in the process of improving their air and missile arsenal as well.
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Intelligence sharing could also cause roadblocks for the cooperation as it demands absolute trust. The three players could well be cautious when it comes to sharing sensitive information at their disposal, rules of engagement, and who has access to what systems, the SCMP report said. It added that financial aspects involved in technology transfer and co-production also hold the potential to stall the deal, particularly in light of Pakistan's economic constraints.