Abhishek Jha/Voice of India World/New Delhi: A new defence agreement signed in Makkah on Friday by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan has caught the attention of Indian security planners. Interestingly, Türkiye had openly sided with Islamabad during the India-Pakistan military clash ‘Operation Sidoor’, in May 2025. The agreement was signed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday and was called the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement..
The agreement,while talks about broader defence cooperation, the most significant part is NATO styled terms which states, “any armed attack against any one of the three States shall be regarded as an attack against them all.” However, the initial information regarding the announcement does not spell out what military steps would actually follow such an attack.
Over the last few years Islamabad and Ankara have deepened military ties. Erdoğan visited Islamabad in February 2025 and the two sides signed 24 agreements and protocols, four of them specifically on defence. They also set up a Security, Defence and Intelligence Joint Standing Committee to give the relationship more structure. On the ground, joint military drills between the two countries are nothing new. Turkish and Pakistani special forces have run the Atatürk and Jinnah exercises for years, and did so again in February 2025.
For India, this defence relationship stopped being a distant concern the moment Operation Sindoor began.
After the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22, 2025, India struck terrorist infrastructure inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir on May 7. In the days that followed, Pakistan sent waves of drones toward Indian territory along the western and northern borders. India’s Ministry of External Affairs and the armed forces said at a May 9 briefing that roughly 300 to 400 drones had targeted 36 locations, stretching from Leh down to Sir Creek. Officials said early forensic checks on the wreckage pointed to Turkish-made ASISGUARD Songar drones among them. During the conflict Turkiye kept no ambiguity about where it stood politically, a stance that strained its relationship with New Delhi considerably.
That backdrop is exactly why the Makkah pact now carries extra weight In the Indian security apparatus.
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia’s ties with India run deep, economically and strategically, and Riyadh’s security priorities remain focused on the Gulf. India has dealt with a similar moment before too when Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed their own mutual defence pact in September 2025, India’s response was measured and it said it would study the implications while pointing to the strength of its own relationship with Riyadh. On September 18, 2025, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs responded, “The Government was aware that this development, which formalises a long-standing arrangement between the two countries, had been under consideration. We will study the implications of this development for our national security as well as for regional and global stability.” The next day, September 19, 2025, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal also said India expected the India-Saudi strategic partnership to take into account “mutual interests and sensitivities.”
Still, the trilateral pact changes the picture somewhat. Pakistan now finds itself backed by Saudi money and strategic heft on one side, and Turkish defence technology on the other. Türkiye’s growing strength in drones, naval systems, electronic warfare and defence manufacturing could matter a great deal to Pakistan if this cooperation moves beyond paperwork.
The real question for India is what comes next. If the Makkah agreement stays largely symbolic and a political statement about deterrence in West Asia, its impact on India may stay limited.
The 2025 Saudi-Pakistan pact was tested by the Iran conflict. The agreement said aggression against either country would be treated as aggression against both. But the full text and precise implementation mechanisms were not made public. Recently during the Iran-US war when Iranian missiles and drones targeted deep into the Saudi defence and civilian establishments and major infrastructures, there was no retaliation from the Pakistani side. This made security experts believe that “attack on one equal to attack on both” does not necessarily mean an immediate full-scale war by the ally. The response can range from troops, aircraft and air defence to intelligence, logistics or diplomatic support.
So the big question for the new Makkah pact is: What exactly does “an attack on one is an attack on all” mean operationally?
The May 2025 conflict already showed how central drones, electronic warfare and precision weapons have become to any India-Pakistan confrontation. Türkiye’s role in supplying and training Pakistan on these fronts has been on India’s radar for a while.
For now, New Delhi’s task is to watch closely whether Riyadh, Ankara and Islamabad start building actual operational structures around their “attack on one, attack on all” pledge. If they do, India will have a new strategic grouping to factor into its defence calculations, even as it continues to carefully manage its own partnership with Saudi Arabia.
