Erdoğan's gift to NATO leaders: revolver with ammunition or old diplomatic tradition?

When NATO leaders left the two-day summit in Ankara, most did not look inside their gift bags. However, when UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and several others opened the ornate wooden boxes, they discovered a .357 Magnum revolver—a Turkish-made equivalent of Dirty Harry's gun. Belgian Premier Bart De Wever's staff photographed the box on the tarmac after discovering the chrome piece. Canadian PM Mark Carney joked that his maple syrup gift was "undermatched."

The gift included six live rounds, causing security teams concern. However, gifting firearms to heads of state is a long-standing tradition dating back to the 19th century, when Samuel Colt presented revolvers to Ottoman sultans and Russian tsars. Later, US presidents like John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower received firearms as gifts. In 2019, Czech PM Andrej Babiš gave Donald Trump a gold-plated pistol.

In Turkey, such a gift is seen as an ancient custom. The revolvers were produced by state-owned MKE, and each was engraved with the recipient's name and boxed with Turkish and NATO symbols. Erdoğan also added a signed copy of his English-language biography and a personal letter. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen thanked Erdoğan and said the revolver would be decommissioned and donated to a museum. Luxembourg PM Luc Frieden said his revolver would be made "irreversibly unusable." Polish President Karol Nawrocki received the weapon, but an aide stressed no one would fire it.

Croatian President Zoran Milanović derided the gift, saying he "shoots from a different weapon." Italian PM Giorgia Meloni made no comment; government sources said the weapon was handed to authorized personnel and would be logged. Turkish gun enthusiast Şevki Yasin Soner called the tradition "ancient Turkish custom" and expressed pride, hoping for more such gifts.