The Indo-Mediterranean is the cradle of four of the world’s major modern religions - Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. It has also been one of the great commercial spaces of human history. Today, it is once again becoming a theatre in which the future balance of power is being decided.

Trade between India and the Mediterranean flourished in Roman times, with Indian spices, textiles, and precious stones reaching Europe through the Red Sea and Egypt, particularly Alexandria. This ancient commercial artery was interrupted after the Rashidun Caliphate conquered Egypt in 641-642 CE, bringing its principal Mediterranean gateway under a new Islamic political order.

Centuries later, Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, eventually becoming Istanbul, the seat of the Ottoman Empire and Islam’s last Caliphate. It effectively arrested trade between Europe and India, requiring European powers to find alternative sea routes.

Emergence Of Mecca Pact

Less than a month after IMEC was announced in 2023, Hamas launched its brutal terrorist attack against Israel on 7 October that year. The transformation of the Middle East's security environment that followed has now been accompanied by the Mecca Pact, bringing together Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan in what its proponents call an “Islamic NATO”.

Egypt is not among the initial signatories, but its possible participation would create a Saudi-Turkey-Egypt-Pakistan configuration (STEP), bringing together four consequential Sunni states. Egypt remains close to the United Arab Emirates as tensions between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh become increasingly visible, hence the challenge on both sides - Cairo’s own rivalry with Ankara notwithstanding.

The four countries have different political systems, strategic priorities, and interpretations of political Islam. They also compete for influence across the Muslim world - these add to other reasons as to why this pact could remain superficial.

What is emerging is a network connecting military establishments, intelligence services and political leaderships, lubricated by Saudi financial power. Riyadh is trying to finance an ecosystem combining Pakistani and Chinese-origin weapons, Pakistani soldiers, and military training, Turkish defence technology, and in the political shadow of Pakistan's nuclear deterrent.

The equation is relatively simple. Turkey has military technology, intelligence reach, and geopolitical ambition. Pakistan has a huge military establishment, nuclear weapons, and decades of experience exporting military training and personnel. Both have varying degrees of financial crisis. Neither has the money Riyadh does.

An Emerging Figure

Among the most important figures driving this emerging architecture is Hakan Fidan, Erdoğan's long-time keeper of secrets. The former Turkish intelligence chief and current Foreign Minister represents the increasingly blurred boundary between intelligence and foreign policy in Ankara. His extraordinary activity across Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and the Gulf suggests Turkey is constructing something larger than a collection of bilateral relationships, now with Saudi financial backing.

Fidan was targeted in 2012 by prosecutors associated with the Gülenist movement - an episode that exposed the growing fracture between Erdoğan's establishment and the Gülen network, both rooted in different branches of the Naqshbandi-Khalidi tradition. His Kurdish background is also noteworthy as Ankara pursues a new opening on the Kurdish question while Turkish-backed Syria negotiates the future relationship between Damascus and the Kurdish-led SDF.

Missing Ingredient: Money

Saudi Arabia supplies the missing ingredient: money. 

Mohammed bin Salman has spent years trying to establish Saudi Arabia as the indispensable political power of the Arab world. Yet Riyadh's record in regional conflicts has been mixed. Yemen demonstrated the limits of Saudi military power, while Iran and its network of partners and proxies repeatedly challenged Saudi influence.

What does the Mecca pact guarantee? This became particularly relevant when the Houthis attacked Saudi Aramco infrastructure in Jizan shortly after the pact was signed. There has been no collective military response in two weeks.

Instead, movement has occurred elsewhere. Fidan travelled to Libya and opened a significant dialogue with General Khalifa Haftar despite Turkey's longstanding support for the rival authorities in Tripoli. Ankara has expanded military support for Syria, challenging Israel at its doorstep. Pakistani defence relationships in Libya and Sudan, meanwhile, point towards an increasingly complicated web of Saudi money, Pakistani military capability and Turkish geopolitical reach.

This matters directly to Europe. Turkey's longstanding disputes with Greece over territorial waters, airspace, maritime boundaries and sovereignty in the Aegean have returned with an aggressive Turkish stance. A more powerful and externally financed Turkey changes the strategic calculation inside NATO itself.

The consequences extend into the Caucasus. Azerbaijan's extraordinarily close relationship with Turkey starts eroding Baku's important defence relationship with Israel. 

Syria and Libya matter even more directly to Europe, and particularly Italy. Increased military competition affects migration, energy security and the stability of Europe's southern Mediterranean frontier.

Pushing The Other Side To Coordinate

A STEP alliance would therefore push countries on the other side of this emerging geopolitical divide to coordinate defence and intelligence. India, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates already possess strong bilateral relationships while their interests increasingly intersect with Greece, Cyprus, and Armenia.

The most paradoxical player may be Iran. Tehran has little interest in seeing a Saudi-financed Sunni security architecture linking Turkey and nuclear-armed Pakistan emerge around it. India consequently acquires additional strategic importance for Iran beyond Chabahar, even while New Delhi maintains exceptionally close relations with Israel and the Gulf monarchies.

Pakistan faces another contradiction. Islamabad has increased its value to Washington as a channel of communication with Tehran. But Fidan's growing diplomatic activity in Iraq and Iran potentially provides another intermediary. The more indispensable Turkey becomes, the less unique Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir's intermediary role becomes.

If the Mecca Pact succeeds, the emerging security architecture could increasingly revolve around Mohammed bin Salman as financier and political sponsor, with Asim Munir supplying military weight and Hakan Fidan much of the diplomatic and intelligence architecture. If Egypt joins, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi would add the Arab world's largest population and one of its largest armed forces.

Formidable Challenges

But the challenges are formidable. Pakistan faces internal political conflicts from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to Baluchistan and an increasingly violent confrontation with the Afghan Taliban, once its proxy and protégé. Egypt presents a different ideological problem. Sisi was appointed Defence Minister under Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi, whom he replaced following the 2013 military takeover. 

Egypt considers the Muslim Brotherhood one of its principal enemies, while Erdoğan's political tradition has maintained deep affinities with Brotherhood-linked political Islam. Saudi Arabia itself has a complicated and frequently hostile history with the Brotherhood, which considers itself an enemy of Saudi Arabia’s royal family.

Even Erdoğan's relationship with Fidan deserves watching. Fidan's growing diplomatic visibility, intelligence connections and international stature make him extraordinarily useful to Erdoğan. Whether that influence eventually becomes a source of political insecurity in Ankara is another question.

EU-India Free Trade Agreement

These contradictions may prevent STEP from ever becoming the Sunni NATO its advocates imagine. On the eve of the EU-India Free Trade Agreement, described as the mother of all trade deals, the stakes are considerably larger than another Middle Eastern defence agreement. The success of IMEC ultimately depends upon who controls, protects and influences the physical and political space between India and Europe.

Europe has a direct interest in preventing Saudi financing from enabling unchecked Turkish expansion in Africa and the Caucasus, while India has an equally strong interest in containing Pakistani strategic expansion in South Asia and beyond.

There is an historical irony. Five centuries after Ottoman control of Constantinople placed a formidable power astride the routes connecting Europe with Asia, a new geopolitical competition is emerging over the corridors connecting the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean.

In 2023, Erdoğan said there could be no corridor without Turkey. Three years later, the question is whether Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are trying to construct a security architecture capable of making that statement true.

(The writer is the Founder of the Indo-Mediterranean Initiative [cnky.in]. Views expressed are personal.)