Pact Formally Renamed "Mecca Defence Alliance" as First Committee Meets in Istanbul

Foreign, defense and military chiefs of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan hold the first meeting of the pact's Strategic Political and Defence Committee in Istanbul — Turkey's FM Hakan Fidan, Defence Minister Yaşar Güler and Chief of General Staff Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu; Pakistan's FM Ishaq Dar, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif and Field Marshal Asim Munir; Saudi Arabia's FM Faisal bin Farhan, Defence Minister Khalid bin Salman and Chief of General Staff Fayyad bin Hamed Al-Ruwaili. Fidan announces the three states have settled on a formal name, the "Mecca Defence Alliance" (also rendered "Makkah Defence Alliance"), and confirms a permanent secretariat will be based in Riyadh with its first secretary-general — a Pakistani official serving a three-year term — to be named soon. The agenda covered military interoperability, joint exercises, defense-industrial cooperation and counterterrorism coordination; Fidan reiterated the alliance remains "open for the partnership and participation of any other country in the region." This is the first concrete institutional step since the Aug 7 signing, directly addressing analysts' earlier criticism that the pact lacked coordinating machinery.