As great powers like the United States pursue frameworks that impose growing security, political, and economic burdens on smaller states, middle and small powers face mounting pressure to reassess their interests. Countries like Pakistan must draw on historical experience to navigate this turbulent moment and chart a more autonomous course.
Three priorities stand out. First, Pakistan must reduce its defense dependency on China through a calculated alternative strategy.
Second, making a middle-power military-industrial complex — such as Turkey’s — into a major defense partner is crucial to hedging great-power competition and promoting defense multilateralism.
Third, building indigenous naval capacity and maritime security through joint ventures in underwater drones, frigates, naval exercises and navigation technology would strengthen strategic autonomy.
Taken together, these priorities suggest that middle and small powers should reduce dependency on single suppliers, avoid great-power rivalry, and pursue self-reliance through indigenous naval capacity.
China currently supplies approximately 80% of Pakistan’s imported military hardware, making it the dominant partner in a relationship often described as a “threshold alliance” encompassing conventional weaponry, nuclear technology and emerging digital domains.
Pakistan’s naval hardware from China includes Type 054A/P frigates and an agreement worth US$5 billion for eight Hangor-class submarines, with four of them to be built in Karachi.
Despite this local production, Pakistan remains heavily dependent on China for its submarine fleet and broader naval imports. Relying exclusively on a single supplier is a risky balancing strategy — akin to putting all one’s eggs in one basket — particularly as the global order shifts toward a new bipolar structure reminiscent of the SEATO and CENTO era.
Critics of the Pakistan-China partnership point to an erosion of Pakistan’s strategic autonomy and a vendor-client relationship that makes it difficult to maintain balance or find suitable alternatives.
Pakistan’s second-largest arms supplier is Turkey, with a partnership focused on co-production, technology transfer and joint research. Pakistan-Turkey naval cooperation under the MILGEM project involves the procurement of four MILGEM-class corvettes, with two vessels built in Istanbul and two at the Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works.
Turkish firm STM completed a mid-life upgrade for Pakistan’s Agosta 90B submarines and designed the PNS Moawin, a 1,700-tonne fleet tanker built in Karachi.
Biannual naval exercises conducted in the Mediterranean and Arabian Sea — named Turgutreis — further showcase Turkey’s Military-Industrial Complex as a viable alternative to China’s for Pakistan.
Islamabad’s goal is to deepen its defense partnership with Turkey while reducing China’s share by shifting joint ventures and technology transfers to areas where Turkey outperforms Chinese naval hardware, moving toward a relationship of parity and mutual interdependence.
While China leads the world in ship production volume and large-scale platform delivery, Turkey has carved out a quality-over-quantity niche with particular strength in modern naval technology.
Turkey’s unmanned naval systems — including TCG Anadolu, the world’s first drone carrier, and naval-specific UCAVs such as the Bayraktar TB3 and Kızılelma — demonstrate operational capability that China has yet to match in this domain.
Turkey’s ADVENT combat management system, developed by HAVELSAN, is considered one of the most sophisticated network-enabled systems globally and is built on open architecture compatible with NATO-standard sensors, weapons, and data links, including Link-16 and Link-22 — making it particularly attractive for multi-source navies such as Pakistan’s.
Pakistan’s strategic interest lies in shifting from unidirectional dependency on Chinese military hardware toward a relationship of shared production and mutual interdependence with Turkey’s military-industrial complex.
This would ease political pressure on Pakistan’s foreign policy in both the short and long term, reduce the risk of becoming a pawn in great-power rivalry, and position Pakistan as an active contributor to multipolarity.
While China leads in production volume, Turkey’s focus on quality and technology in specific naval domains makes it the stronger partner in those areas — and the more prudent choice for a Pakistan seeking genuine strategic autonomy.
Suffian Zafar is an MPhil scholar of international relations at the University of the Punjab, Lahore and a junior research fellow at the Maritime Centre of Excellence MCE. Najeeb Ullah is an MPhil scholar of international relations at the University of the Punjab.