What Yemen Could Make of the Makkah Alliance

A defence agreement usually has years to build routines before it is tested. The Makkah Alliance has had weeks.

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Türkiye signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement on 7 August 2026. On 5 October, after repeated attacks on Saudi territory, the Strategic Political and Defence Committee moved to the practical implementation of collective-defence commitments and approved measures for the rapid deployment of agreed forces and capabilities in the Kingdom, subject to each state’s national law. Official joint statement

Events have accelerated since then. Türkiye has publicly defined its contribution around defence, including air defence, electronic warfare and technical support, while Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has ruled out sending Turkish forces into another country to conduct attacks. Pakistan’s Foreign Office said on 9 October that Pakistani forces would defend Saudi territory but would not cross into Yemen to launch attacks against the Houthis. Türkiye MFA · Pakistan MFA

Then came 10 October. Saudi authorities said an attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh killed 12 people and injured 309, several critically. Reuters described it as the third attack on the airport in a week and the deadliest attack in the Kingdom in more than a decade. President Donald Trump said the United States “may” join Saudi strikes against the Houthis, though no decision had been made at the time of publication. A projectile was also reported near King Fahd International Airport in Dammam. Reuters · Associated Press

Saudi Arabia can finish the war with more than a ceasefire

For Riyadh, the most useful post-war outcome is not necessarily a decisive military victory across northern Yemen. It is a security environment in which attacks on Saudi cities, airports, energy facilities and religious sites become much harder to conduct, while the Bab al-Mandeb approaches remain open and the political cost of restarting the conflict rises.

The Makkah Alliance gives Saudi Arabia an opportunity to keep capabilities that were assembled for the emergency after the emergency passes. Shared air-defence planning, radar and warning data, liaison officers, logistics arrangements, communications procedures and recurring exercises can become permanent even if the immediate deployments do not.

The attacks on civilian aviation make that requirement unusually concrete. Saudi Arabia does not only have to defend military bases and energy sites. It has to keep a national aviation network functioning while missiles and drones can impose costs through diversions, closures, insurance risk and public confidence without permanently destroying an airport. The 10 October casualties turn civil-aviation defence from a secondary consideration into one of the clearest measures of whether collective defence is producing practical protection.

The danger for Riyadh is an ending that reduces the violence without reducing the underlying strike capacity. If the Houthis retain the ability to periodically threaten Saudi airspace, the Kingdom could exit the fighting while inheriting a permanent requirement for high-cost readiness. That would affect not only defence spending but the economic sectors Riyadh is trying to expand, including aviation, tourism, logistics and international investment.

Pakistan’s largest gain may come from what it does not do

Pakistan enters this crisis with a relationship Saudi Arabia has relied on for decades. Its Foreign Office said on 9 October that a substantial number of Pakistani forces and resources are already present in the Kingdom under longstanding bilateral arrangements. The same briefing noted that approximately 2.5 million Pakistanis live in Saudi Arabia. The security of the Kingdom therefore touches Pakistani military commitments, remittances, citizens and diplomacy at the same time.

Operationally, a successful defensive role could strengthen Pakistan’s standing as a Gulf security partner. It would provide real interoperability experience with Saudi and Turkish forces and could support future training, air-defence and defence-industrial relationships.

Yet Pakistan has more political exposure than the deployment announcement alone suggests. In 2015, parliament rejected participation in the Saudi-led Yemen intervention. In 2026, Reuters reported that additional deployments were proceeding without a comparable parliamentary vote, reviving questions about civilian oversight and the boundary of the mission. Reuters

Pakistan also has to preserve room with Iran. A state can defend an ally and still want working relations with the ally’s adversary, but that space narrows quickly if defensive support becomes direct offensive action inside Yemen. The Foreign Office’s explicit 9 October boundary therefore matters. If Islamabad can help defend Saudi territory while retaining channels to Tehran and supporting a negotiated exit, its diplomatic value could actually increase after the fighting. If it becomes identified with an open-ended offensive campaign, that room shrinks.

Türkiye may be building influence without inheriting Yemen

Türkiye is approaching the crisis from a different starting point. Fidan’s 8 October remarks were unusually specific. Military committees are examining air defence, electronic warfare and other technical assistance, but he described the pact as a defence agreement and said Türkiye would not send troops into another country to carry out an attack. He also said preparations to submit the agreement to parliament had been completed.

That creates a potentially controlled route for Ankara. A defensive contribution can make Turkish systems, operators and planning expertise more important to Saudi security while limiting exposure to Yemen’s ground war. It can also deepen an already expanding Saudi-Turkish defence-industrial relationship around drones, sensors, electronic warfare, local production and air defence.

The difficulty appears if the conflict lasts. A prolonged missile and drone campaign can gradually blur the boundary between defending Saudi territory and suppressing the launch networks that threaten it. Türkiye’s parliamentary process may also define a narrower mandate than partners expect. That would not make Türkiye less committed, but it could leave the three founders carrying different levels of political and operational risk.

A prolonged war creates a paradox for the Alliance

The most uncomfortable scenario is not a clear defeat. It is a conflict that continues for months without a political end state.

Militarily, that could accelerate the Alliance. Repeated attacks would force the founders to improve the shared air picture, aircraft identification, intelligence exchange, electronic warfare coordination, logistics, interceptor allocation and command procedures. Problems that might otherwise have taken years of exercises to discover would become visible in weeks.

Strategically, the same process could become corrosive. Saudi Arabia would absorb the economic cost of sustained attacks. Pakistan would face pressure over the duration and legal-political basis of its commitment. Türkiye would repeatedly have to defend the limits of its mandate. A pact intended for wider collective defence could also become identified abroad primarily with Yemen and confrontation with Iran.

Four endings would produce four different alliances

There is no single “post-Yemen” outcome. The institution that emerges depends on how the fighting stops, and whether the military arrangements created in the crisis are retained afterwards.

The United States could change the post-war equation again

Trump’s statement after the 10 October Riyadh airport attack adds a new variable. If the United States joins Saudi strikes against the Houthis, the Yemen theatre becomes harder to describe as a separate Saudi-Pakistani-Turkish response. It would sit more visibly inside the wider US-Iran confrontation.

That could relieve some immediate military pressure on the Makkah founders while complicating their political positioning. Saudi Arabia could gain additional offensive capacity. Türkiye could preserve its defensive boundary more easily if Washington carries part of the strike burden. Pakistan could argue that its own role remains confined to Saudi defence. But direct US participation could also sharpen Iranian perceptions of the alliance environment and make a negotiated settlement harder if the conflict becomes another arena for US-Iran escalation.

At the time of this review, Trump had said only that Washington may participate and was considering the matter. This analysis therefore treats US direct involvement as a scenario, not an established development.

What survives the emergency will define the Alliance

The founders do not need identical roles for collective defence to work. Saudi Arabia can provide the main operational theatre and much of the existing infrastructure. Pakistan can provide scale, personnel and established military links. Türkiye can contribute specialised technical capability and a large defence-industrial base. Complementarity may prove more useful than symmetry.

But war can create habits that institutions later struggle to undo. If Yemen becomes the Alliance’s defining mission, the founders may discover that operational success has narrowed their wider diplomatic freedom. If they can extract the useful parts of wartime cooperation and then reduce the military footprint once the threat subsides, the opposite is possible.

The strongest post-war outcome would be an alliance that retains the capability built under pressure without retaining the crisis that produced it.

That is why the harder test may begin after Yemen. Saudi Arabia will have to decide which emergency arrangements become permanent. Pakistan will have to reconcile regional ambition with domestic legitimacy and relations with Iran. Türkiye will have to convert a carefully bounded defensive role into lasting influence without allowing temporary support to become an indefinite war commitment.

And the Alliance itself will have to demonstrate that it can do something more difficult than mobilise under attack: de-escalate, institutionalise what worked, discard what did not, and remain useful when the battlefield is no longer setting the agenda.