Agreements and documents signed to ensure security and promote joint action have always been of considerable importance. However, their substance has invariably mattered more than the grandeur surrounding the events and meetings at which they are concluded.

The signing of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye on 7 August attracted particular attention, both because of the scale and symbolism of the ceremony and because of the substance of the agreement itself.

In appearance, the agreement may evoke an “Arab Muslim version of NATO”, while strategically it appears to represent a sufficiently serious development. Nevertheless, it is clear that the agreement’s real strength will depend less on the language written on paper than on how far the parties are genuinely prepared to go when a crisis emerges. That, in turn, requires several important nuances to be examined.

First, let us consider the agreement through the eyes of senior officials at the state level. Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has advocated a NATO-like collective defence arrangement among Muslim countries. Türkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan went a step further, describing the Mecca agreement as technically comparable to Article 5 of NATO and discussing plans for a ministerial mechanism and a permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh has taken a more cautious approach, avoiding an official characterisation of the agreement as........

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