Erdogan hopes for expansion of defense pact with Saudis, Pakistan, amid bid to woo Egypt

ISTANBUL, Ankara —  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he hoped more countries would join a defense agreement signed last week between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that they say is aimed at stabilizing a region wracked by conflict.

The so-called Mecca Joint Defense Agreement was signed on Friday as the Middle East grapples with fallout from the ongoing US-Iran war, which has dragged in regional players and disrupted shipping through the key energy pathways of the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.

“Our vision for it is not limited to the three countries,” the Turkish leader told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat daily. “Rather, we aspire for it to grow, and perhaps appropriate conditions will emerge one day for all countries of the region to gather under its umbrella, he added.

He likely did not mean to include Israel in his reference to the region. Turkish-Israel relations, once close, collapsed after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and subsequent war in Gaza. Erdogan frequently compares Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, and has consistently offered diplomatic support for Hamas.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Saturday said Turkey expected Egypt to join the pact “in the next stage,” telling the Anadolu state news agency only “a few technical issues” stood in the way.

Egypt has not commented on the agreement, nor on the remarks by Fidan, who will visit Cairo on Thursday and Friday.

Cairo has robust military cooperation with Ankara, but has given no indication it intends to sign up to the new security alliance, which contains a NATO-style clause saying any attack on one would be seen as an attack on all. Turkey is also a member of NATO.

The five-month US-Iran war, which Washington launched alongside Israel in late February, has upended the security architecture in the region and forced a rethink of decades of conventional wisdom rooted in US military supremacy.

Erdogan said the pact emerged out of the “new circumstances” in the Middle East with regional players seeking to assume greater responsibility for their own security and stability.

“Regional issues should be resolved by regional actors, and with this action, we consider that we have taken a first step toward achieving that goal,” he said.

“Resolving regional issues must be carried out away from formulas imposed from the outside. We know very well that solutions imported from abroad only bring disasters,” he told the Saudi-owned newspaper.

The pact, which consolidates three major US allies into an alternative security architecture that also rejects Israel’s hegemony, seeks to boost security cooperation while also opening the way for “developing joint projects in the defense industries,” Erdogan said.

Along with Turkey, Pakistan has also upped its rhetorical attacks on Israel in recent months, with its defense minister calling Israel “a threat to the entire Muslim world,” and urging a “united military front” against it in Saturday comments.

Since the onset of the war, Saudi Arabia has grown closer to Turkey, with whom it previously had fraught ties, with Erdogan saying Ankara and Riyadh would “take steps that will elevate relations between the two countries to much higher levels,” without giving further details.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.