admin Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan gifted world leaders personalised revolvers with live ammunition after hosting the Nato summit in Ankara this week.
The unusual gift was presented to each head of state and several state officials in attendance from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Canadian leader Mark Carney to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Antonio Costa.
Accompanied by bullets and a cleaning kit, the guns were engraved with the names of each recipient.
Starmer is expected to have his firearm decommissioned before bringing it back to the UK and it remains with officials in Turkey at present, according to the BBC. Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten said that he would be doing the same.
A revolver offered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda with the president’s name engraved, including live rounds, and displayed during a press presentation in Vilnius, Lithuania.
AFP
Decommissioning a firearm means that the gun will no longer be capable of firing live ammunition.
The present also came with a certificate waiving export control to allow the politicians to leave the country with them.
It is likely to represent the country’s weapons industry as well as the discussions held at the summit focused on bolstering the alliance’s defences.
Meanwhile, a European Council official said Costa’s security team took the weapon for checks. “We will follow the Belgian procedures to bring it to Belgium and then we will store it in line with the security requirements imposed by the General Secretariat of the Council,” they said, according to Politico.
Surprised
Belgium’s prime minister was a little surprised on landing back home from Wednesday’s Nato summit in Turkey to find that he had a handgun and ammunition in his luggage.
Erdogan wanted to showcase Turkey’s defence industry, which has become a key export and foreign policy tool.
A revolver offered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever with the prime minister’s name engraved, including live rounds at the Melsbroek military airport in Melsbroek.
AFP
The gun given to Britain’s Keir Starmer came with a cleaning kit and 500 bullets, a Downing Street source said.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s revolver was already stored at the seat of government, the Palazzo Chigi, along with other state gifts.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was intending to donate hers to a military museum, while the leader of Greece planned to give his to the War Museum in Athens.
Images shared by the office of Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda showed what appeared to be the Gumusay .357 Magnum, a rare six-shooter produced by Turkish arms maker MKE in the 1990s.
It was set in a wooden display box featuring Turkey’s flag and the Nato logo as well as a placard inscribed “Gumusay, the first revolver-type handgun produced in our country” in Turkish and English.
Keir Starmer and Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Nato Summit at Bestepe Presidential Compound in Ankara.
AFP
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s spokesperson said all the leaders had been given the same model, engraved with their own names.
The Belgian premier, Bart De Wever, handed his to Brussels’ airport police to be secured in a safe.
An aide to Polish President Karol Nawrocki told Radio RMF FM that his revolver was awaiting customs clearance at Warsaw Airport and would be kept in an appropriate place “so that it is firstly safe and secondly respected as a gift”.
“Certainly no one will be shooting it,” he added.
The offices of the Dutch and Swedish prime ministers said their revolvers had been taken to their respective embassies in Ankara. The Dutch one was due to be disabled while the Swedish one was awaiting import paperwork.
Turkey’s modern handgun industry focuses mainly on semi-automatics, making the Gumusay something of a collector’s curiosity.
Turkish gunmakers have muscled into Europe’s civilian firearms market with inexpensive pistols and shotguns, challenging older Italian and Belgian names long associated with higher-priced sporting and service weapons.
According to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, Turkey was the world’s third-largest exporter of small arms between 2019 and 2024, with exports totalling about $3 billion over the period, behind the United States and Italy.
Agencies
