RIYADH (The Thursday Times) — Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are expected to sign a joint defence agreement in Saudi Arabia on Friday, according to Reuters, which cited two regional sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to arrive for a one-day working visit on 7 August, where he is to meet Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Forces, is already in the Kingdom for the talks.
A source close to the Saudi government separately confirmed to AFP that the three leaders would hold a summit on Friday. Neither Islamabad, Riyadh nor Ankara had publicly announced the signing at the time of writing.
The agreement would build on the Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement signed between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on 17 September 2025 at Al-Yamamah Palace in Riyadh, under which any act of aggression against one country is treated as an act of aggression against both. Pakistani officials have consistently described the proposed trilateral arrangement as distinct from that bilateral pact rather than a replacement for it, pointing to a layered structure of overlapping security commitments.
The prospect of a three-way pact has been under discussion for some time. Pakistan’s Minister for Defence Production, Raza Hayat Harraj, told Reuters earlier this year that the arrangement was “already in the pipeline,” saying a draft agreement was in the hands of all three governments and had been under deliberation for around ten months, and that a final consensus among all three would be required before it could be concluded. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has previously framed the discussions in terms of broader regional cooperation rather than the formation of a narrow alliance.
The timing is significant. The summit comes as Iran and the United States remain locked in a confrontation over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, following Tehran’s announcement last month that it had suspended its commitments under the Pakistan-brokered Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding. Analysts have read the trilateral discussions as a response to uncertainty over external security guarantees, with Saudi Arabia seeking to diversify its security partnerships, Turkey looking to expand its role in the Middle East, and Pakistan seeking to broaden its presence in the region beyond the Gulf.
Pakistan has spent the past year quietly assembling defence partnerships across the Muslim world. The Saudi pact came first, then Kuwait, which formally ratified its 2023 defence cooperation agreement with Pakistan by decree last month, and Islamabad has since been reported to be in talks with other Gulf states on similar arrangements. In each case, the security arrangements have come bundled with talk of trade, investment and energy, a pattern Pakistani officials have made little effort to disguise.
