Military chiefs from Türkiye, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia held urgent talks in Riyadh on Sept. 25 to discuss support for the kingdom following Houthi attacks.
Chief of General Staff Gen. Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu attended the meeting alongside his Saudi counterpart, Gen. Fayyadh bin Hamed Al-Ruwaili, and Pakistan’s military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir.
The commanders discussed intelligence sharing, military coordination and closer integration of defense capabilities, according to Pakistan’s military.
They pledged to put commitments under the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement into practice and reaffirmed their support for Saudi Arabia’s security, sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The agreement treats an attack on any of the three countries as an attack on all.
The military talks followed a meeting in New York on Sept. 24 between Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.
In a joint statement, the ministers condemned attacks they said targeted Mecca and Saudi civilian and economic facilities. They reaffirmed Saudi Arabia’s right to defend its security in accordance with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter.
The ministers had discussed convening the urgent military meeting to examine ways to assist Saudi Arabia under the pact.
They also reviewed preparations to establish the agreement’s secretariat, committees and working groups as technical talks continued on organizing cooperation among the three countries.
The statement reiterated support for efforts to ease regional tensions and resolve crises peacefully, while stressing the importance of sovereignty, noninterference and freedom of navigation.
