Saudi Arabia said it faced fresh missile and drone attacks on Monday (October 12), even as the Riyadh airport remained shut two days after a missile strike by the Houthis, the Iran-backed rebel faction in Yemen.Operationally distinct from the US-Iran war, the Yemen theatre has seen a Houthi takeover of key positions near the Bab-el-Mandeb chokepoint in September, a counteroffensive by Yemeni anti-Houthi forces since early October (backed by Saudi air support), and recurring strikes across Saudi Arabia and Yemen ever since.Months earlier, Saudi Arabia had signed a trilateral defence pact with Turkey and Pakistan, called the Mecca pact. This pact partners held an ‘emergency meeting’ earlier in October and “decided to move immediately to the practical implementation of collective defense commitments”.However, two days later, as the New York Times reported the participation of Pakistani jets in Saudi air support operations in Yemen, Pakistan’s Information & Broadcasting Ministry issued a swift denial, calling the NYT report ‘fake and fabricated’.By October 8, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also re-characterised Turkey’s position, asserting that the pact’s defensive nature means that Ankara will not send troops to Saudi Arabia for attacking another country. This further meant that Turkish assistance to Riyadh remains restricted to bilateral technical and defensive support.These developments do not signal a ‘failure’ of the Mecca pact but rather reinforce how each member state is positioned vis-à-vis each other.To unpack Pakistan’s and Turkey’s postures towards Riyadh’s needs in Yemen, it is essential to distinguish the September 2025 Saudi-Pakistan Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA) from the 2026 Mecca Defence Alliance.Story continues below this adPakistan and the SMDAPakistan’s public rebuke of any attempt at showing its direct intervention in Yemen follows a historic trend.While Pakistan’s operational support for Riyadh in its southern theatre has been well known since the 1960s, Pakistan’s public positioning has consistently attempted to show balance and neutrality. For instance, it is well documented that Pakistani fighter pilots flew the Royal Saudi Air Force’s English Electric Lightning jets to bomb South Yemeni forces in Al Wadiah in 1969. However, the Pakistani military regime under Yahya Khan firmly denied such action then.Nearly 50 years later, as the Pakistan military sent over 1000 personnel to Saudi Arabia during Riyadh’s active coalition operations in Yemen in 2018 (and supplementing an existing 1500+ Pakistani troop contingent already present in the Kingdom), Pakistan’s official position remained tied to its 2015 Parliamentary consensus against an intervention in Yemen. In part, this historic duality in Pakistan’s posture is tied to two characteristics.First is Pakistan’s sensitivities vis-à-vis its western neighbour Iran, who remains the principal state backer of the Houthis and shares a friction-ridden border with Pakistan. Regardless of Pakistan’s overt neutral positioning, its practical pro-Saudi tilt has consistently led Tehran to warn against fresh escalation in Yemen (as Tehran did afresh after the Mecca pact’s ‘activation’).Story continues below this adThis time, Iran’s adverse view of Pakistan is enhanced by its institutional distrust of Pakistani good faith in the mediation channel with the United States. Iranian MP Mohsen Zanganeh’s jibe on October 10 that even the Pakistan PM’s tweets are written by Steve Witkoff is a case in point.This Iran-centric concern, combined with Pakistan’s desire to project itself as a state interested in preserving ‘Muslim’ interests at large, has historically necessitated a position that covers for its operations to preserve Saudi security.Second, is Pakistan’s deference to Saudi leadership of the Islamic world, which is combined with a projection of Islamabad’s own invaluable utility for Riyadh to sustain this leadership.Islamabad proves the former often, such as when it kept away from a Malaysia-based attempt at developing a non-Saudi based alternative for global Muslim leadership in 2019. The latter has been proved operationally, through the Pakistan military’s special relationship with Riyadh.Story continues below this adCompared with Pakistan’s public-facing political institutions, the Pakistan Army has shown strong sensitivities to Saudi needs and concerns. Riyadh itself routes most of its concerns through the Pakistani military and has been a recurring destination for past Pakistan Army Chiefs for standalone visits, sometimes without the civilian leadership present. This is until COAS/CDF Asim Munir broke that pattern by widening his international engagement profile since June 2025.Hence, when the Pakistani Parliament desisted from sending troops to Saudi Arabia in 2015, it was the Pakistan Army under COAS Qamar Bajwa which undercut the legislature through limited troop deployment to the Kingdom (but justified it to Parliament later by downplaying their role).In such deployments, the following operational logic has largely held true — protective operations requiring troop presence are officially restricted to Saudi soil, while force multiplication for Saudi offensive/defensive operations are unofficially ensured for operations not on Saudi soil (such as Yemen or Bahrain).Turkey and the Mecca PactBy 2025, it is this historic pattern of Saudi-Pakistan engagement which was institutionalised in the SMDA. The Mecca pact only broadens the defence cooperation architecture of the SMDA to include an additional state for long term joint capacity building, Turkey.Story continues below this adThe logic of combining Turkish defence industrial depth, Saudi financing, and Pakistani operational experience is a template that has been firming up since 2023, given Ankara’s need to expand its regional military footprint, Riyadh’s recognition of the need to build an indigenous military industrial complex, and Islamabad’s need to mitigate its abject economic crises by leveraging its ability to take geopolitical risks.This logic was decisively driven home by 2026, given the fallout of American, Israeli, and Iranian military operations on Arab states that have traditionally rented out security to external powers.Hence, the long-term technical goals of the Mecca pact are not meant to subsume or gloss over specific political alignments or differences between each partner state. Within the MDA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as SMDA partners have a special political alignment that allows Pakistan to assist Saudi Arabia along a well-established historic template. This template’s need is now further enhanced due to the normalisation of Houthi strikes against critical infrastructure in the Saudi mainland.However, Turkey’s own regional outlook remains a poor fit in the Saudi-Pakistan template. In Yemen itself, Turkey’s longstanding anti-Houthi position has hardly ever meant neat alignment with Saudi Arabia. Rather, Ankara under Erdogan has viewed Yemen as a theatre of geopolitical competition with Riyadh. While Turkey has rhetorically backed the Saudi-led anti-Houthi coalition since 2015, it has refrained from participating with any troops or major combat platforms, restricting support to occasional logistical/intelligence cooperation.Story continues below this adThis is another template that the Mecca pact has evidently not disturbed, despite increased Turkish strategic engagement with Saudi Arabia.Historically, Ankara’s focus has also remained on expanding its own influence in Yemen through the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Yemeni Congregation for Reform (Al-Islah), which has a dual presence in both Istanbul and Sanaa.More broadly, and especially after Turkey’s own geopolitical successes in Syria since December 2024, Ankara’s involvement in the Mecca pact allows it to share in Riyadh’s claim to Islamic leadership, rather than to take operational risks to help preserve it (as Pakistan does). This is the definitive characteristic of the Mecca Defence Alliance.