ISTANBUL — It was a milestone moment. Leaders from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan were meeting at a palace overlooking the Grand Mosque in Islam's holy city of Mecca.
Sitting side by side that day, on Aug. 7, at hardwood desks set against a backdrop of silk drapery, the three leaders put pen to paper and signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement.
Described by some as the birth of a "Sunni Security Triad," the agreement combines Saudi Arabia's oil wealth, the growing defense might of Turkey, which already fields NATO's second largest military, and Pakistan's nuclear capabilities. It includes NATO's Article 5-style language, that any armed attack on one of the three Sunni Muslim states is regarded as an attack on all of them, and a commitment between them to exchange intelligence and defense technology.
But perhaps more important than the contents of the deal, the agreement symbolizes a cornerstone of an emerging regional security architecture and a hedge against post-U.S. geopolitical uncertainty.
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According to Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Ankara was a main driver of the talks that went on for three years. And analysts say it was pushed by Ankara's vision that aims to slowly establish Turkey as a central player in the Middle East, a region rocked by years of war that has shaken longstanding power dynamics.
Turkey's broadening defense-industrial base leaves the country less dependent on the West militarily (though it still craves F-35 jets from Washington). It has also widened its military reach: it has bases in Somalia, Qatar, Libya and is playing an increasingly central role in shaping Syria as it emerges from a decade of civil war. Turkey has also deftly used cultural soft power — its TV shows are watched across the region — and humanitarian causes — building schools across the region — to gain influence. And Turkey has cast itself as a capable mediator to help bring an end to global conflicts, from Ukraine to Iran.
Turkey's bid for greater regional influence comes at a time when the region has been hit by profound shocks that started with the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and continues with the stalemated, seven-month-old U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Those have seen Iran defiant but diminished, with its network of proxies across Syria and Lebanon in ruins. There's growing talk in Washington of the U.S. reducing its Middle East security footprint in the aftermath of the war, amid persistent questions from the region about the value of the U.S.'s security umbrella.
Turkey's ambitions to fill any void though face some real obstacles. Years of economic mismanagement have led to persistent high inflation, a weak currency and rising energy import costs, straining state resources. Its biggest challenge though might come in the form of an increasingly assertive and aggressive Israel.
"Turkey's regional ambitions clearly exceed its current economic means. That doesn't make Turkey a militarily or strategically weak country," says Asli Aydintasbas, director of The Turkey Project at the Brookings Institution. "But Ankara understands that it's been unable to translate its growing influence into a Turkish-led order beyond its immediate periphery."
Turkey as "big brother"
The Ottoman Empire controlled and ran much of the region from Istanbul for nearly half a millenium before it collapsed in the aftermath of World War I. Many in the Turkish government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan see its regional role in civilizational terms and believe that the Ottoman Empire essentially offered a better model of governance and cohesion than the nation-states that replaced it.
" I think that there is a sense of a manifest destiny among Turkey's current ruling elite that Turkey's destined to be the region's heavyweight," says Aydintasbas. But Turkish foreign policy is far more restrained and realistic, tempered in part by its own economic struggles. Aydintasbas says Ankara is trying to manage regional disorder to protect its vital national interests rather than dominate or build a neo-Ottoman empire.
Turkey, says Aydintasbas, understands the region is likely entering a post-U.S. phase after the war with Iran, and it's playing the long game.
"Without a clear U.S. win, gradually, U.S. influence in the region will decline and Turkey will be there to step in," says Aydintasbas.
President Trump has long questioned the value of U.S. bases in the region and has overseen a drawdown of U.S. troops in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. also seems to have blessed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement.
Aydintasbas says the region is now craving stability over values-based democratic transition because there has been too much suffering.
Israel on high alert
Syria has emerged as the central laboratory for Turkey's growing influence. Following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime in 2024, Ankara achieved major core objectives: It secured multibillion-dollar contracts for postwar Syrian reconstruction and became Syria's main partner helping it rebuild its army.
This cuts across Israel's own vision of the neighborhood.
Aydintasbas calls Israel's strategy in the region after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel that killed almost 1,200 people, "mowing the lawn" — a phrase borrowed from the Israeli military itself. Israel's war in Gaza has killed more than 74,000 people, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
"Settling on a regional policy that calls for keeping their neighbors militarily suppressed, giving Israel freedom of action, and making sure that no power rises in the region enough to present a challenge to Israel," she says.
That means a decentralized and fragmented Syria, the southern part of which Israel now controls and shows no signs of ceding.
"In the past, we didn't see Israel and Turkey competing in terms of regional aspirations, or trying to protect or expand their spheres of influence," says Eldad Ben Aharon, a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt and expert on Israeli-Turkish relations.
In early August, Israel launched an airstrike targeting a defunct airbase in Abu al-Duhur, in northern Syria, to pre-empt an anticipated deployment there of Turkish forces. Both Turkey and Syria denied any such troop movements, and U.S. officials criticized the strike as an "unnecessary escalation."
A frosty peace
Turkey has had a long-standing, if frosty, relationship with Israel. It was the first Muslim-majority country to recognize Israel in 1949, and in 2023 just before Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks, Erdogan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shook hands at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
It was a stark difference from how Erdogan addressed Israel at this year's General Assembly gathering.
"Before us stands a genocidal mindset that can never get enough of killing," Erdogan said from the U.N. podium last week, prompting the Israeli delegation to walk out.
Israel rejects the charge of genocide.
Israeli politicians have not held back either, using rhetoric fueled in part by campaigning for upcoming national elections. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has called Turkey "the new Iran." In August, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Erdogan "not to mess with us," after military tensions rose between the two countries over Syria.
Ben Aharon says it's not out of the realm of possibility that Israel and Turkey could find themselves in a violent conflict in a few years.
"Israel and Turkey now increasingly view each other through a zero-sum lens" he says.
Amid heightened rhetoric and tensions, Ben Ahron says a bright spot could be the personal relationship between President Trump and Erdogan.
"Turkey used to operate, quite often, on the belief that the path to Washington went through Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. That leverage Israel once had is gone. Under Erdoğan, Turkey feels that it has direct access to the White House based on personal ties, he says.
With mistrust between Israel and Turkey at an all-time high, Aydintasbas, the Turkey expert at Brookings, argues it is the U.S., a strong ally of both countries, which holds the keys to rebuilding the relationship between Turkey and Israel.
"The Trump administration needs to do what it hasn't been able to do, which is come up with a diplomatic process and a roadmap to actually deescalate initially, and later on build a reasonable relationship between Turkey and Israel that would allow the U.S. to reduce its footprint in the Middle East," Aydintasbas says.
However, Trump's transactional and volatile decision-making makes any such long-term planning challenging.
"Leadership style and the aspirations of the government will determine what happens next in the post-Erdogan period and the post-Netanyahu period," Ben Aharon says. "The people make the difference — it's not just institutions or the countries, it's the specific individuals that lead and make the decisions."
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