What IOS-06 proposes
Research purpose. IOS-06 develops a structured accession doctrine that separates political interest from admission readiness. It combines founder consensus, treaty and legal fit, collective-defence commitment, usable capability contribution, institutional absorption and a post-entry integration programme so that enlargement can add security capacity without weakening the obligations or decision discipline of the existing Alliance.
Political interest should not itself open accession. A formal process begins when the founders agree to assess an applicant and then test legal fit, commitment, capability and the Alliance's own capacity to absorb the entrant.
Contribution and obligation have to be assessed together. Geography, capability, logistics, industry or intelligence access can add value, but membership can also import new theatres, disputes, support demands and decision burdens.
Legal membership and operational readiness need not mature at the same speed. An accession protocol can establish one entry date while domain-specific milestones continue for consultation, warning, air defence, logistics and defence industry.
Boundary of the proposal. Public statements confirm that future accession is permitted, founder approval is required, accession conditions and standards are under consideration, and institutionalisation currently precedes wider entry. No complete public accession procedure, scored candidate framework or published post-entry integration protocol has been identified. The route, balance test, obligation field, assessment file and conflict schedule remain Makkah Alliance analytical proposals.
The Makkah Alliance was created with an enlargement path in view. Türkiye's foreign minister stated on 8 August that the three founders were intended to remain the core states shaping the principles and standards of the arrangement, while other countries could join with their approval. On 31 August he added that accession is permitted under the Agreement and that work was under way on a roadmap covering conditions, processes and standards.12
The timing has been equally explicit. Pakistan said on 10 September that enlargement was not then on the immediate agenda because the founders first needed to solidify the organisation, while Türkiye has repeatedly placed institutionalisation ahead of wider entry. On 25 September the foreign ministers were still reviewing establishment of the General Secretariat, committees and working groups.45
That combination creates a useful basis for an accession doctrine. Political interest can open a conversation, but admission should rest on a separate institutional test: whether the applicant accepts the collective commitment, contributes usable capacity, can connect to the Alliance's working arrangements and can be absorbed without weakening the obligations already carried by the founders.
Enlargement should add usable security capacity before it adds new collective obligations.
An entrant can bring geography, military capability, intelligence access, logistics, industrial capacity or diplomatic reach. It can also introduce a new theatre, active disputes, external commitments, readiness gaps and additional consultation demands. The accession decision therefore concerns the balance between contribution, commitment and absorbable obligation.
The published accession position already contains four governing principles.
The official record does not yet publish a complete accession procedure, but it establishes enough to define the boundaries within which one can be developed. These principles separate the documented position from the Makkah Alliance proposals that follow.
Future accession is permitted.
Türkiye has said that the Agreement allows other states to join and that the Alliance was established with expansion in view.2
The founders retain approval authority.
Türkiye described the three states as the founding core and said further participation would proceed with their approval.1
Conditions and standards matter.
The Turkish foreign minister said work was proceeding on a roadmap covering accession conditions, processes and standards.2
The Makkah Alliance Expansion page already separates government review, public discussion, strategic proximity and the wider watch field because these forms of evidence do not carry the same institutional meaning. IOS-06 begins at the later point where political interest becomes a formal accession assessment rather than repeating the wider public-interest register.7
The Makkah Alliance Accession Route.
A future applicant should pass through a sequence that protects founder authority while avoiding a false binary between immediate admission and permanent exclusion. Where a deficiency can be corrected, the process should be able to move the applicant into a defined pre-accession programme and return it to the relevant gate once the required work is complete.
Founder consensus opens the formal accession process.
Public interest, bilateral closeness or outside advocacy should not by themselves start an accession file. A formal process begins when the founders agree that the applicant should enter institutional assessment.
Accession should be assessed through contribution and obligation together.
A state can add considerable military or geographic value while also increasing the number of crises, external commitments and support requirements carried by the Alliance. The illustrative profiles below are not assessments of any country. They show why enlargement cannot be reduced to military inventory, political affinity or geography alone.
Durable ports, airfields, transit permissions and host-nation access can shorten movement routes and increase strategic depth.
Founder test: access remains legally available and practically usable under crisis conditions.
Access and logistics contribution
This profile tests whether geographic access, transport depth and sustainment remain usable in crisis and add more collective value than the entrant’s additional security exposure.
The accession file should expose the obligations that arrive with the applicant.
The Makkah Alliance Expansion page already records legal, political, external-commitment, resource, military and security barriers in the wider candidate field. A formal accession doctrine should turn those concerns into a founder-level examination of the obligations that would become collective after entry.
New theatre exposure
Territory, maritime approaches, borders, deployed forces and critical infrastructure can extend the geography in which collective defence may be tested.
Political membership and operational integration should be tracked separately.
A treaty accession decision can take legal effect at one point in time while the applicant's ability to participate across intelligence, air defence, logistics, industry and military planning matures at different rates. A Makkah Alliance accession protocol can preserve a single membership decision while attaching transparent implementation milestones to each operational domain.
Confirm national authority, designated representatives and secure contact route.
Evidence: named authority and tested contact chain.
Decision participation can begin promptly once legal accession takes effect.
Once representation, secure communications and national decision authority are settled, consultation can mature earlier than technically demanding military functions.
Accession should inherit the disciplines developed across the first five papers.
IOS-06 closes the series by treating enlargement as a test of the institution already being built. A future entrant should not be assessed against a separate set of abstract criteria. It should be assessed against the same working methods that govern the founders.
The entrant must connect to the Makkah Alliance Operating Cycle.
Accession adds another sovereign decision-maker to warning, assessment, consultation, authorisation, coordinated support and review. The applicant therefore needs named national authorities and an agreed route into each stage before membership can function reliably.
Accession must connect the entrant to warning, assessment, consultation, authorisation, coordinated support and review through named national authorities.
The entrant must be able to consult, request support and contribute while preserving sovereign national choices.
Declared capability should be releasable, interoperable, movable, sustainable and validated for collective use.
Industrial value should rest on qualified production, repair, sustainment and real programme rights rather than automatic workshare.
Information access should expand only with validated security, release and source-protection arrangements.
The Makkah Alliance Accession Assessment File.
A common accession file would give the founders one disciplined record for political consideration without requiring publication of sensitive national material. The file would record the evidence needed to judge whether the applicant can enter the treaty, contribute to its work and meet the obligations that membership creates.
Constitutional route, parliamentary or executive authority, implementing measures, status of existing defence commitments and any legal reservations requiring resolution.
Political acceptance of mutual obligations, consultation expectations, sovereignty principles and the applicant's willingness to support another member under agreed procedures.
Capabilities that can be released, connected, moved, sustained and validated under the Makkah Alliance Capability Framework rather than counted only as national inventory.
Security accreditation, release rules, source protection and the applicant's ability to contribute to joint assessment while preserving national ownership.
Priority technical, procedural, communications, training and logistics work required before the entrant can participate reliably in agreed operational domains.
Territory, forces, infrastructure, active deployments, ongoing disputes and other circumstances that could create a new collective-defence demand.
Potential programme participation, export and technology restrictions, maintenance depth, critical dependencies and areas where the entrant can add production resilience.
Named milestones, responsible institutions and review points for the first period of membership, including domains that require further validation after legal accession.
Pre-existing conflicts require an explicit accession record before mutual-defence obligations extend to a new member.
One of the least visible enlargement risks is the possibility that an applicant enters with an active conflict, recurring border violence, unresolved territorial claims or forces already deployed in a contested theatre. The accession process should not leave the founders to discover only after admission how those circumstances interact with the Alliance's collective-defence commitment.
Pre-Accession Conflict Schedule
A confidential founder record accompanying the accession assessment and identifying circumstances that could generate immediate treaty questions.
Active armed conflict, ceasefire, territorial dispute, foreign deployment, sanctions exposure or recurring military confrontation should be recorded factually.
The founders should settle the legal and political treatment of existing circumstances in the accession protocol rather than relying on assumptions after membership begins.
Material developments in a declared pre-existing conflict should trigger a defined review so that collective consultation begins from a shared factual record.
Pre-existing disputes should be disclosed before accession because collective defence changes the consequences of disputes that were previously national.
This does not predetermine whether any specific dispute is covered by the Agreement. It ensures that the founders make the relevant legal and political decisions before membership changes the Alliance's exposure.
The accession doctrine should protect founder cohesion while keeping the door to expansion genuinely open.
The founding record points in both directions at once. The Alliance was conceived with future enlargement in view, while the founders have also said that its own institutions must first become durable and that accession will require conditions, processes, standards and founder approval. A serious accession doctrine therefore needs neither automatic expansion nor an indefinite freeze.124
The strongest approach is to make the route predictable while keeping the decision political. Applicants should know the evidence that will be examined. The founders should retain full authority over admission. The General Secretariat should maintain a common record. Military and specialist bodies should validate the parts of the file that fall within their competence. An accession protocol should then state the obligations, contributions and implementation milestones that are specific to the entrant.
The central discipline is institutional absorption. Enlargement is strongest when the Alliance can accept the new member's security obligations without diluting consultation, slowing decision-making, exposing protected information or drawing more military support than the enlarged institution can reliably provide. That test protects the current founders and gives a serious applicant a clearer route to membership.
Sources and published record.
The official sources below establish the published accession position and the continuing institutionalisation of the Makkah Alliance. The accession route, balance test, dual-track integration model, assessment file and Pre-Accession Conflict Schedule are Makkah Alliance analytical proposals.
Published government statements establish the legal-political opening for future accession and the founders' current emphasis on institutionalisation. Where the public record does not specify an accession mechanism, the paper labels the proposed method as Makkah Alliance assessment. No candidate state is ranked, scored or recommended for admission in this paper.
Method, boundaries and editorial responsibility
The paper reads official Turkish and Pakistani statements on accession, founder approval, timing and institutionalisation alongside the Makkah Alliance expansion record. It then tests what a workable accession process would need to record across law, commitment, capability, obligations, information access and institutional integration.
Methods & Sources →No complete public accession procedure, applicant scoring system, accession protocol or full treaty text was identified in the source record used here. The paper therefore does not rank candidates, infer unpublished founder decisions or treat proposed thresholds as existing policy.
Government statements support the propositions that future accession is permitted, founder approval matters, standards and processes are under consideration, and institutional consolidation currently precedes expansion. The six-gate route, contribution-obligation balance, obligation field, integration model, assessment file and conflict schedule are Makkah Alliance proposals.
Makkah Alliance is an independent, non-governmental research initiative and the institutional author of IOS-06. Faizan Imam retains editorial responsibility as Founder & Publisher. No paper-specific external funding or conflict has been declared in this record.
Funding & Independence →Citation and permanent record
Makkah Alliance. The Makkah Alliance Accession Doctrine. Institutional Operational Series IOS-06, 29 September 2026. https://makkahalliance.com/articles/makkah-alliance-accession-doctrine.html.
The Makkah Alliance Institutional Operational Series
The six-paper series covers operating method, consultation and response, collective capability, defence-industrial cooperation, strategic warning and future accession. IOS-06 closes the programme by testing whether a future entrant can inherit the same institutional disciplines without weakening the existing Alliance.
A proposed operating doctrine for consultation, sovereign decision-making and collective action.
IOS-02 · RESPONDConsultation and Collective ResponseDecision thresholds, consultation routes, readiness states and collective-response packages.
IOS-03 · BUILDThe Makkah Alliance Capability FrameworkA common method for mapping contributions, interoperability requirements and collective capability gaps.
IOS-04 · PRODUCEDefence-Industrial CooperationJoint requirements, co-development, production and supply resilience across the founding states.
IOS-05 · ANTICIPATEStrategic Warning and Joint AssessmentCommon assessment, warning thresholds and information-sharing while preserving national ownership.
IOS-06 · EXPANDThe Makkah Alliance Accession DoctrineA proposed method for assessing future membership against commitment, capability and institutional readiness.