Two axes of a new Middle East

‘There is no common threat that we have put in writing,’ said Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan when quizzed about his country’s new defence pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Why, then, is the new ‘Mecca Joint Defence Agreement’ agreed between these three Sunni Muslim nations significant? Apart from their conscious invocation of Islamic solidarity in Mecca, the pact stipulates that an attack on any of the three countries would be considered an attack on all three. However, adding a qualifier, Hakan Fidan explained that while the agreement is ‘technically’ similar to NATO’s Article 5, the response to an attack would depend on the ‘circumstances’.

Many observers have speculated that the new pact aims to deter Iran. In the last few months, Gulf capitals, especially Riyadh, have become jaded, given Washington’s lackadaisical attitude to protecting their sovereignty against Iranian attacks. The Mecca pact is a clear signal to the US that, moving forwards, regional players like Saudi Arabia are open to doing the grubby work of defending their interests among themselves. Whether this is merely a bit of short-term hedging or a viable strategy in the long term is open to question.

From a Turkish perspective, the defence pact helps Ankara create a shield against its regional rival Israel and, to a lesser extent, Iran. Differences between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Turkish President Erdoğan are pathological. In the past, Erdoğan has used the choicest expletives for Netanyahu and has even called him ‘a relative of Hitler’. Netanyahu, on his part, has responded in kind by labelling Erdoğan a dictator.

With little love lost between these countries’ political leaders, Ankara and Tel Aviv are also at loggerheads structurally. While it may not have brought down the Islamic Republic, Israel’s recent demonstration of its military prowess in striking Tehran has perturbed Turkey’s defence circles. In opposition to Tel Aviv, Ankara envisions itself as a regional power keen to spread its tentacles from the eastern Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea. With NATO’s second-largest standing army, Erdoğan has talked about his geopolitical ambitions in historic terms. In a speech to mark the opening of the Hagia Sophia mosque, he trenchantly proclaimed: ‘The resurrection of the Hagia Sophia represents our memory full of heydays in our history from Badr to Manzikert, from Nicopolis to Gallipoli.’

There is also an ideological dimension in play here. In the politico-cultural realm, Turkey supports radical Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, while other regional players like Israel and the UAE are deeply wary of such fanatical tendencies.

It is no coincidence then, that, over the last two decades, Ankara’s relationship with Islamabad has expanded significantly. Both states unabashedly promote political Islam, unlike their Gulf counterparts like Oman and the UAE, and co-produce high-grade weapons and technology. Turkey also supports Pakistan against India. Ankara has even made inroads in the Maldives and Bangladesh, two states in Delhi’s immediate neighbourhood. At the same time, it has built a naval base in Somalia and is currently examining the feasibility of Turkish ships using Pakistani ports as part of a bid to spread its naval reach in the Indian Ocean. The new defence pact has the potential to turn Turkey into an Indo-Pacific player.

Like Turkey, Pakistan also benefits from the Mecca agreement. With a tottering economy and a turbulent domestic situation, a defence agreement with regional heavyweights in the Middle East gives the Pakistani government an opportunity to project an image of responsibility and international status.

Notably, last September, Riyadh and Islamabad signed a mutual defence agreement soon after Israel took down Hamas leaders in Doha. The House of Saud and Pakistan have a long history of defence cooperation. During the Cold War, thousands of Pakistani officials served as engineers, aviators, advisors, trainers and security personnel in Saudi territory. Saudi officials were also closely involved in supporting Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure. While Saudi Arabia has balanced its policy in the Indian subcontinent in the last decade by expanding economic ties with India, it still maintains deep institutional links with the Pakistani establishment.

The most intriguing element of the Mecca agreement is the explicit entente that it signals between Riyadh and Ankara. Not long ago, both states vied for the leadership of the Sunni Muslim world. Historically, the House of Saud rose up against the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. After the Arab revolt of 1916 and the Ottoman downfall, the Saudis swiftly conquered the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the 1920s, displacing the Hashemites as guardians of Islam’s holiest sites. In the recent past, Riyadh and Ankara have had disagreements over the Arab Spring, Egypt and Qatar, and also had a very public spat over the brutal murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. Having said that, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have repaired their relations in recent years – courtesy of Iran and Israel.

In broad terms, while the ‘Mecca agreement’ benefits the three parties politically, it is light on military details. Its main significance lies in signalling an emerging political axis in the Greater Middle East region. Such an axis demonstrates the new security linkages between the Aegean and the Arabian Seas. To be sure, Middle Eastern states have a varied history of conjuring up various spaghettis of security cooperation that have perished in bureaucratic files. Prominent examples include the dissolution of the Baghdad Pact in 1979 and the fragmentation of the Gulf Cooperation Council today.

While the new Saudi-Pakistan-Turkey axis gathers shape, there is another implicit alignment of players reshaping the modern Middle East. In recent years, a pragmatic UAE, resurgent Israel and the behemoth of  India have come together in novel ways. This informal trilateral group is a product of strengthening bilateral relations between all three states.

Take the UAE. The stupendous growth of Dubai and Abu Dhabi as formidable centres of international capital, finance and shipping has transformed the Emirates into the ‘Manhattan of the Middle East’. Unlike Saudi Arabia, which is also pouring millions into its much-heralded Vision 2030 programme, the UAE has decisively embraced moderation and religious toleration as its state policy. It firmly opposes, in rhetoric and practice, radical political Islam, be it in Yemen, Egypt, Qatar or Pakistan. This state policy is not driven purely by technocratic rationality but also by personal conviction. As one diplomatic adviser in the top echelons of the Emirati establishment put it to me, he grew up when Arab nationalism was surging during the Cold War. Yet, the state embraced moderation. In his view, confusing the national interest with vaguely defined pan-Arab designs would not have put the UAE where it is today.

Since political moderation has become a part of Emirati identity, Abu Dhabi has also found it easier to cultivate relationships with non-Muslim majority states like Israel and India. Building on covert intelligence cooperation, the UAE normalised relations with Israel in 2020 through the US-brokered Abraham Accords. Since then, despite Israel’s drastic actions in Gaza and South Lebanon, ties between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv have remained stable. In the ongoing Iran conflict, Israel even deployed its Iron Dome battery and the Iron Beam laser defence system in the UAE. Deploying such technology on Arab soil, even a decade ago, would have been called ludicrous.

For its part, Delhi has consistently championed its ties with Israel and the UAE. When Narendra Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel in 2017, a visibly moved Netanyahu said: ‘Prime Minister, we’ve been waiting for you a long time, 70 years in fact.’ To be sure, previous Indian governments also cooperated with Israel but largely kept it hush-hush. A perennial complaint among Israeli diplomats in Delhi was: why did India treat Israel like a mistress? Since 2014, that script has flipped. Today, Israeli and Indian cooperation ranges from counter-terrorism and critical technologies to sharing sophisticated military arms. It is a similar story between Abu Dhabi and Delhi. Diaspora networks, counter-terror intelligence sharing, security cooperation, food security, bilateral investment and supply chains form the bedrock of a robust bilateral relationship.

Minilateral groups like the India-Israel-UAE-United States (I2U2) and the India-Cyprus-Greece-Israel alignment have also added another layer of common ground between these like-minded countries. In both these groups, the notable missing players are Turkey and Iran. The political elite in Turkey and Iran define their identity in opposition to Israel. Turkey and Iran also have frosty relations with India, Cyprus, Greece and the UAE.

In his new book West Asia, the Egyptian-American analyst Mohammed Soliman has fittingly labelled the informal alignment between India, Israel and the UAE the ‘Indo-Abrahamic’ coalition. Soliman argues that the US indirectly backs this grouping while the Pakistan-Turkey nexus, which now includes the Saudis, has the tacit approval of China. It will be tempting for some to pit these two groups against each other. There might be some truth in that. However, given the shifting sands of the Middle East, it is too early to pronounce this with any certainty. Complexity lurks in the shadows.

For one, Delhi has reasonable relations with Riyadh. Irrespective of Saudi Arabia’s historic support for Pakistan and newfound interest in Turkey, it will not sacrifice its economic and political relations with India, at least for the foreseeable future. Before 7 October 2023, Riyadh was also cosying up to Israel. Israeli actions in Gaza, in the last three years, foiled those developments. Questions also circulate about Egypt, another consequential regional power with direct stakes in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

Perhaps the most important uncertainty, however, remains the position of the United States. Washington’s recent actions in the region have been difficult to predict, leaving everyone on tenterhooks. No amount of diplomatic hedging can hide the fact that the US remains Israel’s most consequential security partner. Israel’s trustworthy partnerships with the UAE and India are additional safeguards but not direct substitutes for concrete and committed American support.

All things considered, the new ‘Mecca agreement’ is a demonstration of ‘Southwest Asia’, a concept long alluded to by British practitioners and thinkers who believed that the security of the Middle East is closely connected to that of the Indian subcontinent. Be it the Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan pact or the informal alignment between Israel-India-UAE, the winds of the Middle East have reached the floodplains of the Indian subcontinent.