What does a world leader do with a gun and six bullets? That was the conundrum Nato leaders faced after the Turkish president offered them each a revolver after the Ankara summit.
Several leaders said they had only discovered the contents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s gift package much later, or had not even seen it before it was seized by their security services.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney joked that his gift of maple syrup “kind of undermatched” Erdogan’s offering.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was the first to mention the highly unusual gift, telling journalists on the flight back from two days of talks in Ankara that he and others received a revolver engraved with their names.
Alongside the gun sitting in a red box lined in black were six live rounds and a note exempting the weapons from export controls.
It was a surprising gift to say the least, several officials from the different alliance member states said, and gave rise to some “insane” scenes among the various delegations’ security teams.