On Friday 7 August 2026, in the holy city of Makkah, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed a mutual defence agreement declaring that an armed attack on any one of them would be regarded as an attack on all three. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan called it technically equivalent to NATO’s Article 5.

The three countries have,  combined, nearly 1.4 million active personnel, more than 3,400 military aircraft, over 6,000 tanks, more than 340 naval assets and a combined defence budget of roughly $124 billion. Pakistan has the Muslim world’s only nuclear deterrent. These figures do not make an alliance automatically effective, but they show that Muslim strategic agency is possible.

For decades, the Muslim world has possessed resources but lacked coordination. Israel’s devastation of Gaza has exposed the consequences of that fragmentation. Muslim governments condemn, negotiate and issue statements while Israel continues to act with extraordinary impunity, protected diplomatically and militarily by Washington.

The Makkah Agreement does not immediately change that reality. But it challenges the assumption that Muslim states will always remain divided and can therefore be dealt with separately.

The reaction in Israel’s own press has revealed the uncertainty surrounding the pact. One line of commentary has dismissed Türkiye as constrained and the agreement as manageable. Another has described it as dangerous ground for the Middle East and warned against Saudi Arabia joining governments seeking to make Israel the common enemy.

Both arguments cannot comfortably stand together. If the agreement is irrelevant, it should not provoke such concern. If it is dangerous, then the assumption that Muslim states can always be isolated and managed separately has begun to weaken.

The pact’s members have different interests. Saudi Arabia seeks greater protection amid doubts about the reliability of external guarantees by the US. Türkiye wants greater regional autonomy and influence. Pakistan gains strategic depth, closer defence cooperation with Riyadh and a stronger regional position.

These differences may eventually limit the pact’s cohesion. But they also make the agreement significant: three states with different priorities have nevertheless concluded that dependence on fragmented, externally managed security arrangements is no longer sufficient.

The agreement does not formally identify Israel, Iran or any other state as a common enemy. Nor has it yet created a unified Muslim military front. Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif’s subsequent call for such a front expressed the anger felt across the Muslim world, but it has not become the common policy of Riyadh and Ankara.

Muslims should therefore welcome the agreement and hope that this historic signing ceremony is the start of a functioning alliance. The pact will be judged by whether its members establish permanent mechanisms, share intelligence, conduct joint exercises and respond collectively when one of them is genuinely tested. Türkiye has already spoken of ministerial coordination, military exercises and deeper defence-industrial cooperation,

Egypt’s possible future participation could broaden the arrangement, but its absence at the founding also exposes the rivalries that have repeatedly frustrated Muslim collective action.

Gaza will not feel the effect of the agreement, but the pact’s importance lies in the challenge it poses to the political order that has allowed Israel to act with such impunity while Muslim governments remain divided.

The governments of Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan should now give the agreement concrete meaning. Muslims should demand a timetable for its military mechanisms, joint exercises, intelligence-sharing and a clear definition of what “an attack on one is an attack on all” requires.

The question is no longer whether Muslim states possess the resources to act. It is whether their rulers possess the political will.