The Many Snags In Erdogan's Many Strategic Wins

Latest stories Nepal glacial disaster and the new geography of climate risk India-China competition in the Indian Ocean: stability is not a reset The geopolitical imperative for a self-reliant South Korea

Turkey now confronts an entirely new situation, brought about by the strategic treaty recently concluded in Jeddah with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This diplomatic instrument opens entirely new prospects for a genuinely enlarged Middle East.

It links, at the military level, the only officially recognized Islamic nuclear power, Pakistan, with a medium conventional power such as Turkey. Turkey has NATO's second-largest land force and a defense industry so advanced that it effectively invented“drone warfare.”

Together with an economic giant like Saudi Arabia, both can finance even the costliest innovations. Or perhaps it is capable of financing the longest future conflicts.

Such a concentration of Islamic forces appears to be a risk to Israel, especially given that Erdogan has long proclaimed himself a champion of the Palestinian cause and has pursued international legal action against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just days after his Jeddah pact.

Moreover, the diplomatic act might affect that process, sometimes referred to as the“Arab Risorgimento.” It began with the so-called“springs” in numerous states of the Middle East and North Africa.

It dreamed of what could one day be the reunification - as Lawrence of Arabia had foreseen in his“The Seven Pillars of Wisdom” in the 1920s - of the entire Arab Sunni ecumene under a single banner. Then it was an anti-Ottoman plan, since the Ottoman Empire ruled most of the Arab world.

It is therefore no coincidence that Egypt - the state that alone accounts for roughly half of the world's Sunni Arab population and controls the“Arab League” - has remained outside the Jeddah Pact. Perhaps it's cultivating other projects that could prove to be at odds with those of its three signatories.

Iran reacted immediately and hostilely. It regards Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey as too close to the United States for any real trust in the sincerity of their intentions.