Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan take the Makkah defence pact committee to Riyadh

Ministers and commanders from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were due in Riyadh on Monday for the second sitting of the Makkah pact's strategic political and defence committee, with Houthi attacks on the agenda and a Turkish statement that the talks would also cover how far the alliance has got in building institutions.

The Turkish foreign ministry said Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Defence Minister Yasar Guler and the chief of the general staff, General Selcuk Bayraktaroglu, would attend. Pakistan's foreign ministry said its defence and foreign ministers and its army chief would meet counterparts from the kingdom. Saudi state media had not, by Monday morning, published its own confirmation. The National reported that the session was expected to start in the late afternoon.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar posted pictures from Madinah on his way to Riyadh. On Friday he said Iran had suggested engaging Yemen's Houthis politically after the group's attacks, and that the Makkah committee would take up that idea this week. The Turkish statement was narrower. It said the meeting would address recent developments in the region and "the stage reached in the Alliance's institutionalisation efforts." Islamabad's statement said Pakistan's presence showed a resolve to keep contributing to regional peace and stability.

The pact itself is two months old. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey signed the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement in August, in Mecca, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman receiving President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before the signing. The committee held its first meeting in Istanbul in August. Photographs from that session showed Saudi Chief of General Staff General Fayyadh bin Hamed Al Ruwaili, Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Fidan, Dar and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan.

Monday's meeting sits on a different map from the August signing. On Sunday, Rashad al-Alimi, head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, announced operations to retake Houthi-held territory, and the Saudi-led coalition said it had carried out 97 targeting operations on the Tor al-Baha and Taiz fronts. The Houthis said they had fired at an Aramco site in Riyadh. A committee whose members include the Saudi defence minister and the Turkish foreign minister cannot treat that as background. It is the file they walked into.

The institutional question is the part of the Turkish statement that is easy to under-read. A defence pact signed in August does not yet have a standing headquarters, a defined command for a shared operation, or a published rule for when an attack on one member obliges the others. "Institutionalisation" is the word Ankara used for that unfinished work. The Istanbul meeting was the opening session. Riyadh is the first test of whether the committee meets when a member is already in a shooting war, or only when the calendar says it should.

Pakistan's stake is less direct and more awkward. Islamabad is not a party to the Yemen war. It is a party to a pact with the state that is funding and, this week, flying missions in that war. Dar's report that Iran wants a political track with the Houthis puts Pakistan in the role of messenger between Tehran and a committee whose Saudi member is engaged on the Taiz front. Whether the committee treats that message as a proposal or as a talking point will say more about the pact than the communique's language on stability.

Turkey's stake is the Red Sea and the wider Iran war. Ankara has spent the year criticising US and Israeli strikes on Iran while keeping its own defence industry sales moving. Sending the foreign minister, the defence minister and the chief of staff to the same room is a heavier delegation than a routine committee usually draws. It is the delegation you send when you expect the meeting to discuss operations, not only statutes.

No text of a decision had been published when the ministers were still travelling. The facts that will be checkable after the session are simpler than the rhetoric. Did Saudi media confirm the meeting. Did the committee say anything specific about Taiz, Aramco or a political track with the Houthis. Did it name a headquarters, a secretariat or a date for the next sitting. Those three answers will show whether the Makkah pact, eight weeks after the signing in Mecca, has become a body that meets about a war, or a photograph that meets about a pact.