BANGLADESH EYES ENTRY INTO SAUDI-PAKISTAN-TURKIYE DEFENCE PACT FOR ‘NATIONAL INTEREST’

Fri 21 August 2026:

Bangladesh is open to joining a Saudi Arabia-led economic or defence framework involving Pakistan and Turkiye, while weighing its own national interests and changes in global trade and the economy, Foreign Affairs Adviser Humayun Kabir said on Thursday (Aug 20).

“Bangladesh maintains a positive approach towards the possibility of joining an economic or defence framework involving Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkiye, taking into account its own interests and the changing dynamics of the global economy and trade,” Kabir said in an interview.

Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan signed a joint defence pact in Mecca earlier this month, committing to consider an armed attack against any one of the three countries as an attack against all three. Bangladesh’s position comes as Dhaka seeks to expand its diplomatic and economic engagement with several countries, including Pakistan and China.

Kabir said Bangladesh was strengthening relations with Islamabad, particularly through trade and people-to-people connectivity, describing the move as part of normal diplomatic engagement.

He also said relations between Bangladesh and China had reached “a new height”, with Dhaka seeking deeper engagement with Beijing while avoiding geopolitical pressure. He pointed to the two countries’ “Two Plus Two” mechanism and comprehensive partnership as part of the growing relationship.

__________________________________________________________________________

https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaAtNxX8fewmiFmN7N22

__________________________________________________________________________

Experts believe that Turkey’s footprint in Bangladesh has been growing since well before the Makkah Pact existed. Ankara is now the fourth-largest supplier of military equipment to Dhaka. Late last year, Pakistan’s army began training Bangladeshi personnel – the first such arrangement since 1971.

Turkish intelligence has reportedly financed renovations at Jamaat-e-Islami’s Dhaka office and arranged visits for Islamist figures to Turkish arms facilities. Ankara has spent two years building relationships in Dhaka that a defence pact simply formalises.

This is why Indian commentary has turned sharply toward Turkey as the more urgent problem, rather than treating Pakistan as the sole variable. Some analyst’s framing – that Turkey is becoming “the new Iran” in South Asian discourse – captures a shift in how Delhi’s strategic community talks about Ankara: not as a distant NATO member with an independent streak, but as an active player reshaping India’s eastern neighbourhood.

Pakistan is to India’s west, across a border India has spent fifty years learning to manage – through deterrence, through diplomacy, through sheer familiarity.

Bangladesh is to the east, wrapped around India’s most vulnerable stretch of territory: the Chicken’s Neck corridor connecting the northeast to the rest of the country, and a belt of insurgency-prone states that have depended on Dhaka’s cooperation to stay quiet. India didn’t build serious contingency planning for that flank turning unfriendly, because for fifteen years under Sheikh Hasina, it didn’t have to. Hasina’s ouster in August 2024 removed that assumption overnight.

What’s emerged since is not a formal alliance against India – nobody involved describes it that way, and the pact’s own language insists it isn’t directed at any state. But intent and effect aren’t the same thing. Whether or not Ankara, Islamabad and an interim government in Dhaka are coordinating against India specifically, the practical result is a security architecture on India’s eastern border that India didn’t design, doesn’t control and can’t easily counter with tools built for a different era.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

__________________________________________________________________________

FOLLOW INDEPENDENT PRESS:

WhatsApp CHANNEL
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaAtNxX8fewmiFmN7N22