Turkey is reportedly lobbying to join a defence pact lately formed by Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Bloomberg reported on January 8 that talks between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan on Ankara joining the military bloc were at an “advanced stage and a deal is very likely”. The news service cited people familiar with the matter.

Such a trilateral defence arrangement, would link Pakistan as the Muslim world’s only state boasting a nuclear arsenal and Saudi Arabia, as the Arab world’s only G-20 economy, with Turkey, a country that has developed the second largest armed forces within Nato, behind those of the US.

Both Pakistan and Turkey, meanwhile, are becoming major weapons manufacturers and exporters.

On this note, Reuters reported last week that cash-strapped Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are in talks to convert around $2bn in Saudi loans into a deal to buy JF-17s, warplanes jointly produced by China and Pakistan.

While Pakistan historically has close relations with both Saudi Arabia and Turkey,  both the latter countries have sometimes had severely strained relations, even in recent years.

Following the Arab Spring, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan encouraged popular protests that the Saudis regarded as a threat to the rule of their monarchy.

A decade ago, Saudi and UAE forces battled Turkish-backed forces in Libya, while, the Saudi kingdom and Turkey had a big falling out in late 2018 following the assassination of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Ankara and Riyadh have been patching up relations since 2021, with Turkey mindful that its fragile economy was weakened by a lack of Arab world trade and investment.

In ongoing conflicts, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are supporting the same side in Sudan’s civil war, backing the Sudanese army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that are assisted by the UAE.

Reuters, meanwhile, on January 9, reported that Pakistan is closing in on a $1.5bn deal to provide arms to the Sudanese army. Pakistan is said to be on the point of selling Abdel Fattah al-Burhan's military arms including 10 Karakorum-8 light-attack aircraft, more than 200 scouting and kamikaze drones and advanced air-defence systems.

Writing in Forbes on January 11, geopolitical risk analyst Guney Yildiz, advised that “if you’re reading this as a ‘Turkey drifting from NATO’ story, you will miss the signal.

“The real story is about how security is being bought and sold in the Middle East now—less as a single umbrella and more as a layered portfolio. Clause by clause. Corridor by corridor. And with commercial logic quietly stitched into the seams.”

He added: “A collective-defense clause is not a collective-defense capability. NATO's Article 5 [which states that an armed attack against one Nato member is considered an armed attack on all Nato members, obliging a collective response] is powerful because institutions back it: planning depth, interoperability standards, command integration, and seven decades of operational habit. The Saudi–Pakistan pact, signed in September 2025, has none of that infrastructure. At least not yet.”