Türkiye Says It Expects Egypt to Join the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement

EGYPT · POLITICS

Egypt has not joined the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement. Its foreign minister says Cairo is studying membership seriously and that any decision must first clear constitutional and legal review. Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan pressed the case at El Alamein on 13 August, and his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty replied that binding military commitments require in-depth study under Egypt’s constitution.

What the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement is

It was signed on 7 August at Al-Safa Palace in Makkah by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Its core clause treats an armed attack on any signatory as an attack on all three.

It is a new, standalone trilateral treaty rather than an enlargement of the Saudi–Pakistan defence agreement signed in September 2025. The Pakistani foreign ministry’s joint statement makes no reference to that earlier pact.

The distinction matters when reading what Egypt is being asked to do. Cairo is being invited into a treaty six days old, not into a settled architecture.

Nobody involved has used the phrase, but the shape is familiar. It is a mutual-defence clause of the kind that has historically been very hard to sign and harder still to unwind.

What actually happened at El Alamein

The meeting on 13 August was the second Türkiye–Egypt Joint Planning Group, at foreign-minister level, held over a single day on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. Fidan’s visit ran 13 to 14 August.

He put it as an expectation rather than a demand. “This foundation laid in Makkah by the three countries has indeed been a historic initiative,” he said, adding that Egypt is “one of the brotherly countries we consult with first on all issues”. He had told Anadolu earlier that he believed Egypt “will also be among us” at the next stage.

Abdelatty’s reply was careful rather than cold. He said the defence obligations require in-depth studies according to the Egyptian constitution and against the country’s legal commitments.

Fidan also held a trilateral with Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, and met the head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Major General Hassan Rashad.

Why Cairo is hesitating

Egypt’s standing position in the region is engagement with everyone, including Iran. A clause that automatically commits it to a war it did not choose sits badly with that posture.

The timing sharpens the problem rather than easing it. The region is living through an active conflict involving Iran, attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz and continued disruption to Red Sea shipping.

Those are precisely the conditions in which a mutual-defence commitment could be triggered. They are also the conditions in which Egypt’s canal revenues are most exposed.

Studying is therefore not a stalling tactic so much as the substance of the position. Strategic ambiguity is the asset Cairo is protecting.

The economics were already on the table

It would be a mistake to read the trade agenda as a payment for the defence question. The El Alamein meeting was the scheduled follow-up to the second High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council held in Cairo on 4 February, where the two presidents set a target of US$15 billion in bilateral trade by 2028.

The concrete deliverable was technical and real. Fidan and Investment and Foreign Trade Minister Mohamed Farid Saleh signed a decision amending Protocol 3 of the bilateral free trade agreement, covering rules of origin.

Egypt also acceded to a Turkish memorandum on coastal transport connectivity with several African states, and the two sides discussed a Turkish industrial zone in Egypt and the reactivation of a roll-on roll-off shipping line. Neither of the last two has been agreed.

The gap between ambition and reality is wide. Bilateral trade was about US$6.8 billion in 2025 on Egyptian official data, against a target more than double that.

What it means for the region

A four-way bloc joining Egypt to Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan would be the largest redraw of Middle Eastern security arrangements in a decade. The four already meet as a quartet, most recently at foreign-minister level in Cairo in June.

For Africa, the consequences run south. Türkiye has spent a decade building defence, construction and airline relationships across the continent, and a formal security bloc anchored in Cairo would give that reach a harder edge.

The near-term signal to watch is not a communiqué. It is whether Egypt’s parliament is ever asked to look at a text.

Until that happens, the accurate description is the one Abdelatty gave. Egypt is studying it.

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