EAM downplays Pakistan-Turkey-Saudi defence pact: ‘What has it done amid live military situations in these countries?’

India questions the value of the new Turkey-Pakistan-Saudi defence pact

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has questioned the immediate value of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement signed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, asking what it had done in response to the “live military situations” facing each of the three countries. Speaking at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum, Jaishankar was asked whether India was worried about the pact. “You think about it. There are live military situations that each of the three countries is facing. What has this pact done in response to that?” he said.

His comments came as the three countries move to deepen defence cooperation under an agreement signed on August 7 following talks between Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A joint statement said the pact is intended to strengthen collective deterrence against any act of aggression, stipulating that any armed attack against one of the three states would be regarded as an attack against them all.

Jaishankar said India would factor the agreement into its security calculus, stressing that developments involving countries that are “not well disposed” towards India are always taken into account. “In my calculus, everything counts, everything will have a weight… and sometimes things need to play out,” he said. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said India is assessing the implications of the agreement from the perspective of its national security and regional peace and stability.

Differing threat perceptions under the pact

Analysts have questioned whether the pact is truly comparable to a NATO-style collective defence arrangement. Writing in The Indian Express, an analysis noted that NATO’s Article 5 is limited to Europe and has only been invoked once, arguing that common threat perception, not a formal pact, is what matters. Within the Mecca Agreement, threat perceptions differ: Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping do not pose a direct threat to Turkey or Pakistan, while Turkey is more concerned with the Israeli presence in Syria and Pakistan regards India and Afghanistan as threats. The article recalled that in 2015 Pakistan did not take part in the action against the Houthis despite requests from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The analysis also questioned whether the pact could provide Saudi Arabia with protection from Iranian retaliation that the US could not. It noted that Iran has emerged as a major regional power, having withstood more than 23,000 Israeli and US bombing raids in the war. It also recalled that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had signed a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement last year, and that Pakistan had deployed 13,000 ground troops to Saudi Arabia in April, asking whether Pakistanis had fired a single shot in discharge of their obligations under that earlier agreement.

A non-aligned shift or a defensive reaction?

An analytical piece from Middle East Monitor argues that the Mecca pact is not a NATO-like pact, not a Sunni pact, and not the first regional security framework in the Middle East. Instead, it presents the initiative as a shift toward collective, non-aligned security mechanisms, prompted by a loss of confidence in the US security guarantee following what the author calls the “illegal war on Iran” launched by Israel and the US since February. The article argues that the pact operates on mutual invitation and coordination, rather than an automatic trigger like NATO’s Article 5, and could inspire other heavily aligned nations such as Japan, South Korea, or Vietnam.

Adding to that picture, a report in Outlook India noted that Turkey’s defence ministry said the three countries would establish mechanisms for senior political and military officials to coordinate, conduct joint exercises, and expand defence-industrial cooperation. Reuters reported on August 13 that the planned cooperation would cover land, sea, air and cyber exercises, alongside unmanned systems, electronic warfare and artificial intelligence. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has compared the pact’s collective-defence provision to NATO’s Article 5, under which an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all. The pact is defensive and not directed at any particular country, according to the governments involved.

India's strategic calculus and domestic concerns

In India, the pact has been scrutinised particularly through the lens of Operation Sindoor, the codename for India’s missile strikes against Pakistan’s terror infrastructure in May 2025. According to a piece in The Tribune, Pakistan avoided a prolonged conventional escalation by engaging in high-intensity drone and electronic warfare before seeking an early ceasefire. During the conflict, Türkiye’s supply of unmanned aerial vehicles and electronic warfare devices to Pakistan underscored Ankara’s willingness to back Islamabad against New Delhi, the article said. Four months after Operation Sindoor, Pakistan formalised a mutual defence pact with Saudi Arabia, guaranteeing that aggression against either country would be considered aggression against both.

The Tribune piece argued that India’s conventional military edge over Pakistan has eroded due to the China-Pakistan axis and Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons, which it says operate under a “Flexible Response” doctrine. It also pointed to alleged erosion in the IAF’s combat aircraft fleet, delayed development of an indigenous jet engine, the Agniveer scheme, and slippages in the Navy’s submarine and carrier projects, urging India to focus on diplomatic contact with China, infrastructure building, and a forward-leaning military posture.

Perspectives

Government of India: External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar downplayed the pact, questioning its response to the ‘live military situations’ faced by the signatories, while saying India would factor it into its security calculations.

Pakistani and Turkish officials: Turkey’s defence ministry and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan have presented the pact as a defence cooperation mechanism, drawing parallels with NATO’s Article 5 while maintaining that it is defensive in nature.

Analysts and commentators: The Indian Express, Middle East Eye, and The Tribune offered differing perspectives: some question the pact’s coherence due to differing threat perceptions, others see it as a non-aligned departure from US dependence, and some treat it as a signal of strengthened axis that India must reckon with.