Erdogan gives Starmer personalised revolver, UK keeps it in Turkey

Recep Tayyip Erdogan handed Keir Starmer a personalised revolver with live ammunition during the NATO summit in Ankara, then added a written note waiving Turkish export controls on the weapon. Starmer’s gift, engraved with his name, was one of a set of similar pistols given to leaders at the two-day summit on July 7-8, 2026.

The revolver has not been brought back to Britain and remains with British officials in Turkey. Starmer said it had to stay there because importing a live firearm into the UK would be illegal under Border Force rules covering firearms and offensive weapons, and officials have not released a picture of the weapon. It is expected to be decommissioned before any return, so it can no longer fire live ammunition.

The episode landed in the middle of a summit meant to project alliance discipline, not spectacle. NATO said the Ankara meeting was the second summit it has hosted in Türkiye, after Istanbul in 2004, and Secretary General Mark Rutte set the agenda around defence investment, defence-industrial production and support for Ukraine. The alliance’s Defence Industry Forum took place on July 7, a day before the leaders’ main meetings concluded.

For Starmer, the gift also came alongside a more conventional diplomatic outcome: he signed a defence agreement with Erdogan on the margins of the summit. That pairing sharpened the tension at the heart of the Ankara meeting, where security cooperation, weapons controls and public accountability collided in a single gesture that British authorities were obliged to keep out of the country.