Fidan invokes NATO Article 5 to defend Makkah pact, but the comparison misses its test

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan invoked NATO’s Article 5 record at a New York panel on September 21 to answer criticism that the new Makkah defence pact had not visibly responded to Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia. His comparison rests on a correct number—NATO has formally invoked Article 5 only once—but leaves out how an alliance can deter and assist its members without activating that clause.

Asked whether the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani agreement had faced its first real test, Fidan turned to former US ambassador to Ankara James Jeffrey and asked how many times NATO’s collective-defence provision had been used. The audience answered once. Fidan argued that NATO was not dismissed as a “paper tiger” on that basis and said it was unfair to judge a newly formed alliance against Yemen’s decade-long conflict.

The frequency of formal invocation is not the only measure of credibility. NATO activated Article 5 after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Its members also maintain standing forces, exercises, defence plans and forward deployments intended to make the pledge credible before a crisis reaches the threshold for that step.

Türkiye itself offers an example of alliance support outside Article 5. After a Turkish aircraft was downed and Syrian shellfire killed five Turkish civilians in 2012, Ankara sought consultations under Article 4. NATO later agreed to reinforce Turkish air defences with Patriot batteries supplied by Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. The deployment was a concrete allied response without a formal Article 5 invocation.

The Makkah agreement was signed on August 7, 2026 and says an armed attack on one of its three members will be considered an attack on all. The question raised by attacks on Saudi Arabia is therefore what practical support and shared procedures the three states can provide now, not how often a 77-year-old alliance has declared its ultimate collective-defence clause.

Fidan said on September 19 that Türkiye was ready to help meet Saudi military and technical needs. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan later clarified that any assistance under the pact would depend on the attacked state’s request and the scale of the threat, and would be decided through consultation rather than triggered automatically. Those statements describe potential forms of support but do not themselves establish what has been deployed.

The pact moved into a more operational phase when the Saudi, Turkish and Pakistani military chiefs met in Riyadh on September 25. They discussed intelligence sharing, military coordination and the integration of capabilities, according to Pakistan’s military. Those steps, and any assistance that follows, provide a more direct test of the new arrangement than the number of times NATO has formally used Article 5.