THE second meeting of the Pakistan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Turkiye Trilateral Defence Collaboration has discussed potential collaboration in defence equipment technologies, including research and development. According to Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) the three sides reaffirmed the importance of pooling the intellectual, technical, financial and human resources of the three brotherly nations to achieve shared objectives and attain self-sufficiency in the defence domain.
The Islamic world is rich in resources and it has manpower as capable as anywhere in the world but regrettably it has miserably failed to exploit this potential optimally either for economic development or meeting its legitimate security and defence requirements. It is because of this criminal negligence on the part of the leadership of the Muslim world that today a majority of the Islamic countries have overwhelming reliance on others in financial, economic and defence matters and the so-called cooperation comes, at times, at huge costs and conditions. In this backdrop, moves towards fostering trilateral defence cooperation among Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye are welcome but ideas need to be translated into reality at a faster pace in view of the deplorable conditions of the Muslim world, which is not in a position to defend its rights, interests and causes. The three countries have the resources and potential to realize the objective of entering into a deeper collaboration in different aspects of the defence sector, especially in research and defence production. As for Pakistan, Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) is the largest defence industrial complex, comprising fourteen ordnance factories and seven commercial entities, producing conventional arms and ammunition as per international standards. Pakistan also has joint production projects mostly with our reliable friend China aimed at production of tanks, navy ships, submarines and aircraft but the defence production hasn’t met the intended levels primarily due to financial constraints. As per Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) figures, since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002,
Turkey’s indigenous defense industry underwent a significant transformation, propelling the country from being the world’s third-largest importer of weapons to becoming the twelfth-largest arms exporter. During this time, the indigenous defence industry sector kept growing despite obstacles, challenges and embargoes, thus enabling Ankara to be categorized as an “emerging producer” that aims to amplify production capabilities in aerial, naval, land, electronics and ammunition domains. Turkeyia’s military export target for 2023 was $6 billion which speaks volumes about its defence production capabilities. According to SIPRI, Saudi Arabia ranked as the fifth-largest defence spender in the world in 2022 behind the United States, China, Russia and India but eighty percent of its defence imports are from the United States. Under the Vision 2030 economic diversification program, Saudi Arabia aims to localize 50 percent of its military procurement by 2030 under the aegis of two military industrial bodies: The General Authority for Military Industries (GAMI) and Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI). Based on their bitter experience of over-reliance on the West, especially the United States, there is growing realization not just in GCC countries but also among other Muslim countries to diversify their defence procurement needs. In this backdrop, we hope that the three countries would carry out deeper studies to pinpoint potential for defence cooperation and initiation of joint ventures in the three countries to meet their own needs and that of other countries. Strategists point out that the most obvious advantage that we have over other countries is the lower costs for equipment that is just as good as its Western counterparts to fulfil the requirements of countries that do not have a huge defence budget at their disposal. Fortunately, Pakistan and Turkiye have already laid strong foundations for defence cooperation as Pakistan defence forces are increasingly reliant upon the latter for the maintenance and up-gradation of its defence hardware. Turkeyia has aided Pakistan in upgrading both its F-16 fighter jets acquired from the United States and the ageing Agosta submarines purchased from France. Turkeyia’s ASFAT has built four MILGEM-class corvette ships in cooperation with the Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works. However, through active collaboration of the KSA, this collaboration can be expanded to include establishment of joint production facilities in all the three countries in areas where there is a need to minimize reliance on others due to changing regional and global situation.
