Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey and Qatar signed an agreement to strengthen their defense capabilities through joint military production, training and research at a meeting in Doha on Wednesday, NHK World-Japan reported.
The agreement adds a defense partnership among countries that maintain close ties in the Muslim world. It brings the four countries together to cooperate on the production of military equipment and the training and research that support their defense capabilities.
Turkey and Pakistan had already signed a separate pact with Saudi Arabia in August. That pact and the memorandum signed in Doha set out different provisions: the August agreement addresses an attack on a member, while the new memorandum covers cooperation on defense capabilities.
Representatives of the four countries' defense ministries gathered in the Qatari capital to sign the memorandum, Turkey's state-run media said, according to the Oct. 22 NHK WORLD-JAPAN NEWS bulletin. The meeting brought together ministry representatives from each of the countries participating in the new partnership.
The memorandum covers cooperation in military production, technical military training, research and development. Those areas extend the partnership beyond training to the development and manufacture of military equipment. Production and research are therefore part of the announced cooperation alongside the technical training of military personnel.
Turkey's Defense Ministry said the partnership would bring economic benefits. That assessment came from a government participating in the agreement, which gave no estimate of the benefits or timetable for achieving them. The ministry's assessment described an expected benefit of the partnership without specifying its size or when it would be realized.
The separate August pact commits Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to treating an attack on any one of them as an attack on all three. Its provision concerns how the three countries would regard an attack on one of the pact's members.
The new agreement's announced provisions concern cooperation on defense capabilities. They cover the military production, technical training, research and development described in the memorandum signed by the four countries in Doha.
No funding commitments, production targets or specific joint projects were announced. How the four countries would divide the work and put the memorandum into practice remained unspecified. The announced areas of cooperation thus identify the work covered by the partnership, while leaving the allocation of that work among the participating countries unspecified.
