Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Kamal Öztürk at Al Jazeera reports that Türkiye is now interested in joining the Saudi-Pakistan security commitment, which considers an attack on one an attack on both. It is modeled after Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization charter. Ankara has not yet contacted Saudi Arabia and Pakistan with this request, but is studying doing so.
Türkiye is, of course, a member of the original NATO, raising questions about why they feel they need an additional alliance. Öztürk says that Ankara’s officials view the old NATO as about “East-West” issues, which are no longer salient. I take this position to suggest that Türkiye is not very interested in the struggle against the Russian Federation in Ukraine, unlike most other NATO members with the exception of Hungary and, recently, perhaps Trump’s United States.
Türkiye feels more threatened by Israel than by Putin’s Russia. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan supports Hamas and the new fundamentalist government in Syria, both of which have been heavily bombed by Israel. Israel has air dominance in the Middle East and possesses several hundred nuclear weapons. Türkiye does not.
Turkish officials told Öztürk that they see a benefit in hitching their wagon to nuclear-armed Pakistan and to the economic powerhouse of Saudi Arabia. Bingo. Türkiye is looking for a nuclear umbrella and clearly does not believe that Article 5 will be honored by other NATO members if Israel attacks Türkiye, since the UK, the US, France, Germany and Italy have granted Israel impunity to attack whomever it pleases in the region. Ankara has long had excellent military relationships with Pakistan, and gaining from Islamabad a pledge to defend Türkiye from Israel would build on that long and warm history.
Triple Entente? Via Mapchart.net
For its part, the officials say, Türkiye brings a sophisticated manufacturing base to such an alliance, including the production of arms, and it has the world’s sixth largest army.
These Turkish officials reject the moniker “Islamic NATO” for the proposed tripartite alliance, since that term might imply that even more countries would be admitted, such as Egypt. It is, they say, “a narrow military alliance.”
I wrote earlier,
- “here you have Pakistan, a Muslim country of some 250 million, with a military that ranks 12th in the world and that possesses a stockpile of nuclear weapons. In fact, Pakistan ranks above Israel, which comes in at 15 in the Global Firepower Index. Pakistan’s only weakness in a comparison with Israel is its finances.
But a Pakistan-Saudi combination rather ups Islamabad’s finance game.”
As for Türkiye, it is ranked no. 9 militarily in the world, after France and Japan but ahead of Italy.
You put Türkiye and Pakistan together in a military alliance, and you have something right there.
Ayesha Fatima writes at MSN, “Ankara is building corvette warships for the Pakistani navy, has modernised dozens of Pakistan’s F-16 fighter jets, and shares drone technology with both Riyadh and Islamabad. Turkey has also invited the two countries to take part in its Kaan fifth-generation fighter jet programme…”
Photo of Ankara by ekrem osmanoglu on Unsplash
NATO, with its Article 5 pledge, grew up as a response to the nuclear-armed Soviet Union during the Cold War. Ironically, the Soviets never dared invade a NATO member, and so article 5 was only invoked regarding 9/11, leading NATO member states to fight in America’s Afghanistan War.
I wrote in September about the Saudi-Pakistan security pact that considers an attack on one an attack on both. It seemed to me then a massive turning point in modern Middle East security affairs. The agreement was reached quickly after the Israeli air force bombed Doha in Qatar, the first time Israel has struck directly at one of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman), which consist of Sunni monarchies with oil and/ or fossil gas.
The Gulf has enormous financial and energy-related power, but has small populations that cannot plausibly mount armies capable of defending themselves. It is sort of like six trillionaires living in a dangerous slum. Trillionaires don’t have to live that way. It was natural that in order to fend off Israel Saudi Arabia would turn to Pakistan, since Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman knows he cannot trust Trump or any American president to have his back against Israel. Trump demonstrated the correctness of this fear when he allowed Israel to strike Doha, even though he later made Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologize to Qatari leader Sheikh Tamim Al Thani. Qatar had leased the al-Udeid Air Base to the US, which bases some 12,000 personnel there, precisely to guarantee that Doha would never be bombed by anyone. But Netanyahu went there. MBS read the tea leaves. Now, so has Turkey’s Erdogan.
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