A surprise gift from Erdogan to NATO leaders.. What is it? How did they deal with it?

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan presented the leaders participating in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit with a pistol and its ammunition, yesterday.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer explained, in an interview with British journalists on the plane during the return flight from Ankara to his country, that the Turkish President presented each leader with a pistol engraved with his name, along with a box of ammunition.

Erdogan accompanied his gift with a memorandum exempting these weapons from export restrictions.

But Starmer explained that he had to leave the gun in Türkiye, because bringing it into the United Kingdom would have been against the law.

A German government spokesman also said on Wednesday that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz received a similar pistol with its ammunition.

The spokesman explained to the German News Agency (DPA) that the pistol that Meretz received was delivered to the German embassy in Ankara, in preparation for completing the procedures for its legal import and inclusion in the group of official gifts.

Two European Union officials also confirmed that Erdogan presented the same pistol to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the President of the European Council, Antonio Costa.