ANKARA, July 9 (BV) – NATO leaders returned home from the alliance’s summit in Ankara carrying an unexpected diplomatic gift after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan presented each of them with a Turkish-made revolver engraved with their names.
The presentation was intended to showcase Türkiye’s expanding defense industry, which has become an increasingly important element of the country’s exports and foreign policy.
Images released by the Lithuanian presidency showed the gift as a Gümüşay .357 Magnum, a collector’s revolver manufactured by Turkish state-owned defense company MKE during the 1990s. The firearm was presented in a wooden display case bearing the Turkish flag and the NATO emblem, together with an inscription describing it as the first revolver-type handgun produced in Türkiye.
According to officials, all participating leaders received the same model.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said he was surprised to discover the revolver and accompanying ammunition in his luggage upon returning home and immediately handed the weapon to airport police for secure storage.
Several countries said the firearms would not remain in private possession. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis plans to donate his revolver to the War Museum in Athens, while European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen intends to give hers to a military museum. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s gift has already been placed among official state gifts at Palazzo Chigi.
Officials in the Netherlands and Sweden said their revolvers were transferred to their embassies in Ankara pending import procedures, with Dutch authorities planning to deactivate the weapon.
A British government source said Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s gift also included a cleaning kit and 500 rounds of ammunition.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney joked that his traditional gift of maple syrup “undermatched” Erdogan’s present, adding that he had not personally handled the firearm and that it had been deactivated before likely being transferred to Canada’s national war museum.
Türkiye has become one of the world’s leading exporters of small arms. According to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, it ranked as the world’s third-largest exporter of small arms between 2019 and 2024, behind only the United States and Italy.