Turkish President gifts guns to NATO leaders

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever today said he was “quite surprised” to discover that there was a gun and accompanying bullets in his luggage. The incident happened when the Belgian leader returned home after the NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye ended on July 8.

Mr. De Wever then handed over the gun to police at Brussels airport to keep it in a safe.

Images released by the Lithuanian President’s Office show that the gift appears to be a Gumusay, a rare revolver model made by Turkish arms manufacturer MKE in the 1990s. The gun is placed in a wooden box printed with the Turkish flag, the NATO logo and a sign engraved in Turkish and English with the content: “Gumusay, the first revolver produced in our country”.

A spokesman for Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said all leaders attending the NATO summit were given the same gun model, with the recipient’s name engraved on each gun.

An assistant to Polish President Karol Nawrocki said that his gun is awaiting customs clearance at Warsaw airport and will be stored in a suitable place, to ensure safety and show appreciation for the gift. “Certainly no one will use it to shoot,” this person added.

According to representatives of the Prime Ministers of the Netherlands and Sweden, the guns were delivered to their embassies in Ankara. The Dutch gun will be disabled, while the Swedish gun is waiting to complete procedures to be imported.

According to sources from the British Prime Minister’s Office, the gift for Prime Minister Keir Starmer comes with a cleaning kit and 500 rounds of ammunition. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s gun has been kept at the Italian government headquarters along with other diplomatic gifts.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to donate the gift to a military museum, while Greek leaders plan to donate the guns to the War Museum in Athens.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s move is said to be aimed at promoting the Turkish defense industry, a field that plays a key role in exports and is a tool for Ankara’s foreign policy.

Türkiye’s modern pistol manufacturing industry mainly focuses on semi-automatic guns, so the Gumusay model is considered a quite rare artifact and is of interest to collectors.

In recent years, Turkish companies have significantly expanded their market share in the European civilian gun market, thanks to competitively priced pistols and hunting rifles. This move has put pressure on long-standing Italian and Belgian brands, which are famous for their sporting guns and weapons for law enforcement.

According to the Small Arms Survey organization based in Switzerland, Türkiye is the world’s third largest exporter of light weapons in the period 2019-2024, with a total export turnover of about 3 billion USD, second only to the US and Italy.