Turkey prepares a mandate to send military personnel to Saudi Arabia under the Mecca defence pact

The paperwork moved in two steps this week. On Tuesday, Turkey sent the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement to parliament for ratification. The pact, signed in August by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, treats an attack on one member as an attack on all three. On Wednesday, a lawmaker from Erdogan's ruling AK Party, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the deployment mandate will follow once the ratification bill passes.

What Turkey would send first is specialists, not combat troops. The lawmaker said technical personnel and experts would go initially to help with air defences, electronic warfare technology and other defensive support, and that no Turkish troops deployed under the pact would take part in offensive operations. Two officials had earlier told Reuters that Turkey's contribution was expected to stay limited to military equipment, intelligence sharing and weapons systems, and that no deployment of personnel had taken place under the alliance so far. Turkey has condemned the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia and has agreed to join a Saudi led coalition working to keep Red Sea shipping safe.

Pakistan's part in the pact is larger and less clear. Pakistani officials say Islamabad will give Saudi Arabia whatever military help it needs to defend the kingdom and Islam's holiest sites, and an unspecified number of Pakistani troops have been stationed in the kingdom since the early 1980s to train and advise Saudi forces. Pakistan's Information Ministry has called reports that 30,000 to 40,000 Pakistani troops are already in Saudi Arabia speculative. The three governments say the pact is not aimed at Iran or any other country. It is being assembled, all the same, while Houthi missiles and drones fall on Saudi cities, and Turkey commands the second largest army in NATO, as of October 21.