Turkey’s strategic duality. Building a security architecture beyond NATO

Turkey is not leaving NATO. The harder question is whether the Alliance can accommodate a member that is simultaneously building a security architecture of its own. The defence agreement signed in Mecca on August 7th by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan initially looked like another regional arrangement produced by a Middle East in turmoil. Its implications may extend well beyond the three signatories.

The agreement declares that an armed attack against any one of the three countries will be regarded as an attack against all three. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has described the mechanism as technically similar to NATO’s Article 5, while stressing that it is not directed against Iran or any other country. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has indicated that the framework could expand, with Egypt among the possible future participants.

The significance of the agreement lies in what it reveals about Turkey’s evolving approach to power. Ankara has spent years pursuing greater strategic autonomy while remaining a member of the western alliance system. The Mecca agreement suggests that Ankara may now be moving towards something more ambitious: strategic duality, in which Turkey stays inside NATO while building security relationships outside it in which it can act as a leading power. That possibility deserves closer attention in Europe.

From capabilities to commitments

Turkey’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 air defence system offers an instructive precedent. The dispute which erupted between Ankara and Washington was connected to a weapons purchase that the US judged incompatible with NATO’s security architecture and risky for the F-35 programme. Turkey was removed from the F-35 programme and faced sanctions in retaliation. The episode demonstrated that NATO membership does not give Ankara unlimited freedom to build capabilities that conflict with core Allied interests.

The Mecca agreement, however, raises a different kind of issue. The S-400 could be kept outside a procurement programme, with its deployment restricted and its interoperability denied. A security commitment is harder to unwind. Once institutionalized through ministerial consultations, military planning, intelligence cooperation and expectations of mutual support, such a commitment acquires political momentum on its own. The Mecca framework, though still deliberately flexible, is already moving in that direction. The question for NATO concerns the point at which external partnerships develop into a second collective-security framework. That distinction may not matter today. It could matter enormously in a future crisis.

More than three countries

The Mecca agreement did not create a security network from nothing. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan had already concluded a strategic mutual-defence agreement in September 2025, under which aggression against one would be regarded as aggression against both. Turkey and Pakistan have spent years deepening a defence relationship covering industry, technology and counterterrorism. Turkey and Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, have moved towards closer economic and defence cooperation. Mecca institutionalizes these previously separate relationships within a trilateral framework that will include, according to the Turkish foreign minister, a ministerial committee and a permanent secretariat in Saudi Arabia.

That detail is important as declarations of solidarity can be vague and fade over time. While institutions build continuity, create bureaucratic interests and shape expectations of their own. The three countries also bring complementary assets. Saudi Arabia contributes financial resources, energy weight and a growing defence capability. Pakistan brings a large military, nuclear capability and decades of security cooperation with the Gulf states. Turkey contributes the most developed defence-industrial base of the three, a powerful conventional military, NATO membership and strategic geography.

The combination does not amount to an alternative to NATO. Instead, it allows Ankara an opportunity to become the organizing power of a security network that exists outside the NATO alliance.

Religion provides the narrative. Security provides the substance.

The religious dimension of the agreement should be neither exaggerated nor ignored. Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia share a common Islamic political vocabulary, and the choice of Mecca as the venue carries real symbolic weight. Their cooperation also reflects interests in deterrence, defence cooperation, military technology, regional stability and reducing dependence on external security providers. Religion supplies political legitimacy while security interests supply the substance. Yet, treating the agreement simply as religious solidarity risks underestimating the institutional components. Thus, its durability will depend on whether these interests remain aligned when a real crisis arrives.

When commitments overlap

The Mecca agreement’s significance will ultimately be tested by a crisis. Suppose Saudi Arabia or Pakistan invokes the collective defence mechanism. Would Turkey respond according to its own national assessment, or consult NATO allies first? What happens if Washington and Ankara read the same crisis differently? These questions grow more consequential as the framework becomes institutionalized.

Fidan, Turkey’s foreign minister, has stressed that the agreement is not directed against Iran or any other country, and that the form of assistance would be worked out through consultations after an attack. This makes the arrangement less rigid than Article 5 in practice. Flexibility does not eliminate strategic consequences. Ambiguous commitments leave room for manoeuvre while also leaving uncertainty about how partners will act once their interests diverge. For NATO this is a question of alliance cohesion.

The Alliance has spent decades building integrated command structures, common standards and procedures for collective decision-making. The Mecca framework has none of this yet, so its political commitment currently runs well ahead of its demonstrated military capacity. That gap may narrow.

Turkey’s European reach

This emerging duality for Turkey deserves particular attention in Europe. It sits at the intersection of Europe, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Middle East and Central Asia. It remains one of NATO’s most important military powers and is central to the Alliance’s southeastern flank. At the same time, Turkey has developed a foreign-policy network extending well beyond the Euro-Atlantic space. Its defence industry has become a central instrument of that strategy. Turkish drones, naval systems, armoured vehicles and missiles have created durable relationships with countries that share different formal alliances, alongside political and security ties across the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Western Balkans.

The Western Balkans are particularly relevant. Turkey has built its deepest security ties in the region with Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo – formalised in 2024 through comprehensive military framework agreements and reinforced by Turkey's naval presence in Albania – while its cooperation with Bosnia and Herzegovina, though real, remains comparatively limited to bilateral training plans and equipment sales. Its growing defence-industrial presence gives these relationships an additional dimension.

The Mecca agreement, however, goes one step further by building institutionalised collective security alongside bilateral and issue-specific ties Turkey has developed over the past decade. This is important for Europe as Turkish influence already shapes European security beyond NATO’s formal structures. The Black Sea is one such example. The Western Balkans are another. Turkey’s regional role is therefore becoming harder to read through the old question of whether Ankara is “turning towards” or “away from” the West. Turkey’s policies increasingly operate across several security environments at the same time.

From strategic autonomy to strategic architecture

The debate about Turkish foreign policy has long centred on strategic autonomy: Ankara’s effort to widen its freedom of action by reducing dependence on any single outside power. The S-400 purchase was one expression of this approach. The Mecca agreement suggests something further. Turkey is acquiring the ability to organise other states around its own security relationships. That is the difference between strategic autonomy and strategic architecture. An autonomous state seeks room to manoeuvre. A state capable of building its own security architecture can create room to manoeuvre for others as well. This gives Ankara an additional strategic asset and potentially greater leverage inside NATO.

Turkey does not need an alternative to the Alliance to benefit from a parallel network. NATO membership raises the value of the new architecture because Ankara can draw on the Alliance’s credibility and capabilities while leading a separate structure outside it. That is the key to Turkish strategic duality.

A networked security order

The Mecca agreement also fits in a broader shift in international security, in which regional powers increasingly hedge across overlapping partnerships rather than rely on one framework. Saudi Arabia maintains its relationship with the United States while deepening ties with Pakistan and Turkey. Pakistan combines its relationship with China with Gulf partnerships. Turkey stays in NATO while building its own networks. India has little reason to answer the Turkish-Pakistani relationship with a formal counter-bloc. Its likelier response is to deepen existing ties with Israel and the UAE.

The pattern points towards a more fluid system of overlapping security networks in which states seek redundancy. A state can remain embedded in one security system while building another. The question is how these systems interact when their commitments collide.

NATO has little reason to stop Turkey from developing legitimate partnerships outside the Alliance. Stronger regional capabilities can contribute to burden-sharing. The problem begins if an external framework creates obligations that conflict with Alliance priorities. The Mecca agreement has not reached that point yet. And there is no evidence of integrated command, common forces, joint operational planning or automatic intervention. Its mechanisms remain limited and its members retain wide freedom of interpretation. NATO should nevertheless follow how the framework develops. Its consultation mechanisms, intelligence cooperation, interoperability and defence-industrial cooperation will be important indicators of whether the agreement develops into a more substantial security structure.

Turkey presents a particular case for the Alliance: a member developing a security network beyond NATO while remaining deeply embedded in the Alliance itself. That does not make Turkey an adversary; just a more complicated ally.

Lessons for Europe

It would be incorrect to say that the Mecca agreement establishes an “Islamic NATO”. What it does reveal, however, is Turkey’s ability to operate inside and outside established security structures simultaneously. The agreement may still fail to become a durable collective-defence mechanism. Members may disagree over priorities, new participants may decline to join, and its procedures may remain deliberately vague. Therefore, what matters is that Ankara is acquiring an institutional platform to organize security relationships beyond the Alliance while remaining one of its most strategically important members.

For Europe, the lesson is that the old assumption that a country must choose between western alignment and strategic independence is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Turkey may be able to pursue both. The S-400 dispute forced Washington to confront the limits of Turkish autonomy in the military-technical sphere. The Mecca agreement may eventually force NATO and its European members to confront those same limits in the political-security sphere.

Nevertheless, Turkey is not leaving NATO. Thus, the harder question is whether NATO is prepared for a Turkey that increasingly has something of its own to lead outside it.

Nikola Lunić is a Serbian geopolitical and security analyst and Navy Captain (Ret.). He previously served as Serbia’s Defence Attaché in London and Oslo and as Executive Director of the Council for Strategic Policy. He currently works as a Strategic Affairs Consultant and is a regular guest lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Osijek.