Erdogan gifted NATO leaders the Gümüşay .357 Magnum revolver, a firearm with a special history from Turkey

At the close of the Ankara Summit, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan presented the leaders of NATO member states with customized Gümüşay .357 Magnum pistols.

With this symbolic gift, the aim was to highlight the trajectory of Turkey’s defense industry, as well as the progress of domestic small arms production.

Each weapon was engraved with the recipient’s name and packaged in a customized wooden box featuring the Turkish flag, the NATO emblem, and a commemorative plaque.

The basic package also included six rounds of ammunition and a gun maintenance kit. According to reports, the box prepared for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer contained 500 rounds.

Because the weapons were fully functional and delivered together with ammunition, various legal and security procedures were triggered in the receiving countries. In line with each state’s national legislation, the pistols underwent customs checks, were taken into custody by authorities, deactivated, or transferred to museums.

According to reports, Belgium handed the weapon over to Brussels Airport police, Poland kept it in customs pending procedures, the Netherlands and Sweden temporarily left theirs at their embassies in Ankara, while Italy sent it to the state repository for official gifts.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to donate the revolver to a military museum, while Greece intends to display it at the War Museum in Athens. Meanwhile, Canada deactivated the weapon and separated it from the ammunition.

The Gümüşay .357 Magnum is considered the first modern pistol developed in Turkey. It was designed in the early 1990s by the state-owned company MKE (Makine ve Kimya Endüstrisi) as a firearm for the civilian market, for sport shooters, and for limited police use, serving as proof of the Turkish industry’s ability to produce a modern revolver without a foreign license.

This model is a six-shot revolver equipped with a double-action and single-action (DA/SA) mechanism. The barrels and cylinders were produced by MKE, while other components were assembled by the company Küssan A.Ş. Production was halted after a short period, and no official data have been made public on the number of units produced, which has made it a relatively rare model on the collectors’ market.

According to reports, the selection of the Gümüşay as a diplomatic gift was intended to represent the beginnings of Turkey’s modern small arms industry, which in recent years has recorded significant export growth.