ANKARA — Turkey plans to bolster Saudi Arabia’s defense capabilities through joint planning, military training and intelligence sharing under the trilateral Mecca pact, as Riyadh confronts renewed pressure from recent Houthi advances in Yemen.
Ankara’s support, however, will stop short of direct military intervention, underscoring Turkey’s preference for strengthening Saudi deterrence and improving interoperability among the pact’s three members — Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan — without becoming a combatant in the Yemen conflict. The pact, signed in August, commits the three countries to defense cooperation and treats an armed attack on any one of them as an attack on all three.
A Turkish official who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said Ankara will focus on establishing the pact's de facto headquarters in Saudi Arabia and setting up mechanisms for joint planning, training and intelligence sharing. The aim would be to improve interoperability among the Turkish, Pakistani and Saudi militaries and national security bureaucracies.
The Houthis made key territorial gains last week, capturing the strategic town of Mokha and the Red Sea islands of Hanish and Perim from Yemen’s internationally recognized Saudi-backed government forces. The advances strengthened the group’s control over the critical Bab el-Mandeb strait, through which 12% of global trade passes, including 11% of oil and 8% of liquefied natural gas. Ankara condemned the Houthi attacks but gave no indication that it intended to join the fight.
