A Presidential Gift: Erdoğan Surprises NATO Leaders With a Rare MKE Gümüşay Revolver

A Diplomatic Gesture Fit for Heads of State

At the 36th NATO Summit, held July 7–8, 2026, at Türkiye's Beştepe Presidential Complex in Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan closed out two days of high-level talks with an unexpected and strikingly personal gift for the visiting alliance leaders: a Gümüşay .357 Magnum revolver, a rare Turkish-made six-shooter with each recipient's name engraved on the barrel. Presented in a handsome wooden display box bearing the Turkish flag and the NATO emblem, alongside a box of ammunition, the gesture turned heads across the alliance and put a proud piece of Turkish gunmaking history squarely in the global spotlight.

Türkiye's Moment to Host the Alliance

Türkiye's Beştepe Presidential Complex in Ankara, where Erdoğan welcomed NATO leaders for the 36th summit. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The Ankara summit marked just the second time Türkiye has hosted NATO's full membership, following Istanbul's turn in 2004. Leaders from all 32 member states gathered at the Presidential Complex, where Erdoğan and First Lady Emine Erdoğan welcomed guests with a formal reception and state dinner on the summit's opening night — an evening President Trump later called "a 10 out of 10, maybe even a 12," praising both the hospitality and Türkiye's infrastructure. Talks over the two days centered on allied defense spending targets, continued support for Ukraine, and deepening the alliance's defense-industrial cooperation — a backdrop that made Erdoğan's gift feel less like a curiosity and more like a statement about Türkiye's growing role as a defense manufacturing power.

Unveiling the Gift: A Rare Piece of Turkish Craftsmanship

The Gümüşay .357 Magnum, presented by President Erdoğan to Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda at the NATO summit in Ankara. (Photo: Lithuanian President's Office / Reuters)

Each revolver arrived in a wooden presentation case stamped with Türkiye's star and crescent and the NATO logo, accompanied by a bilingual plaque describing it simply as "Gümüşay, the first revolver-type handgun produced in our country." Spain's government confirmed that every leader received the identical model, with only the engraving on the barrel — their name — setting each one apart. It's a gift that doubles as a small piece of living history: the Gümüşay was developed in the 1990s by MKE, and Türkiye's handgun industry has leaned almost entirely toward semi-automatics ever since, making this six-shooter something of a cherished collector's curiosity even at home.

Inside the Gümüşay: Türkiye's First Homegrown Revolver

The Gümüşay holds a special place in Turkish firearms history as the country's first domestically developed revolver-type handgun. Built around a traditional double-action design, it is chambered for .357 Magnum and will also chamber and fire the milder .38 Special round, giving it real versatility for both target work and personal defense. The revolver was offered with three barrel lengths — 2.5 inches, 4 inches, and 6 inches — and holds six rounds in its cylinder, following the same well-proven layout that has made medium-frame revolvers enduring favorites among shooters worldwide.

By the Numbers: A Rare Find Worth Celebrating

Because the Gümüşay was produced only in limited numbers during the 1990s, before Türkiye's handgun makers pivoted heavily toward semi-automatic pistols, surviving examples are treated as genuine collector's pieces on the Turkish market today. That rarity is part of what made it such a meaningful choice for Erdoğan's gift: rather than reaching for a modern export model, he chose a piece of homegrown engineering history to send home with each NATO leader. It's a fitting emblem for a country whose arms industry has grown immensely since the Gümüşay's debut — according to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, Türkiye was the world's third-largest exporter of small arms between 2019 and 2024, shipping roughly $3 billion worth of firearms, trailing only the United States and Italy.

A Storied Manufacturer Behind the Gift

The Tophane-i Amire cannon foundry in Istanbul, illustrated in 1838 — the historic Ottoman arsenal from which MKE traces its origins. (Illustration: John Frederick Lewis, public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

The Gümüşay's maker, MKE (Makina ve Kimya Endüstrisi, or the Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation), is one of the world's most historically rooted arms manufacturers. Formally established in 1950 and wholly owned by the Turkish Treasury, MKE traces its lineage back to a cannon foundry built in the late 15th century under Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, which supplied the Ottoman army's artillery corps for centuries. After multiple reorganizations, MKE became the primary supplier to the modern Turkish Armed Forces, and today it operates more than a dozen facilities and exports to over 40 countries. Choosing a Gümüşay for a head-of-state gift let Erdoğan tie that centuries-old heritage directly to Türkiye's modern defense-export success story, with one unbroken thread running from a 15th-century Ottoman foundry to a 21st-century NATO summit.

How the World's Leaders Received Their Revolvers

The gesture was warmly received across the alliance. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the Greek prime minister both announced plans to donate their revolvers to military museums, ensuring the gift's craftsmanship and symbolism will be preserved for the public to see. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's revolver now rests at Palazzo Chigi alongside the country's other state gifts, while several other delegations — including Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Poland — simply routed their revolvers through standard embassy and customs channels, the same careful process any nation follows when a ceremonial firearm crosses a border. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney joked that his own gift of maple syrup "kind of undermatched" Erdoğan's gesture, a good-natured moment that captured the spirit of the exchange. Far from overshadowing the summit's substantive work on defense spending and Ukraine, the Gümüşay gave leaders and the traveling press corps a memorable, good-natured story to carry home from Ankara.

What This Means for Firearms Enthusiasts and Historians

For collectors and historians alike, the moment shines a welcome light on a fascinating chapter of Turkish gunmaking: a rare 1990s revolver, born from a manufacturer whose roots reach back to an Ottoman-era cannon foundry, now sitting in embassy vaults and museum collections across Europe. With NATO's leaders literally carrying a piece of MKE's history home in their luggage, renewed interest in the Gümüşay — and in Türkiye's remarkable, centuries-spanning arms-making tradition — seems all but certain to follow.

Sources: Türkiye Today | CNN | Mezha | Small Arms Survey