‘Not what I expected’: Carney gets an engraved gun as gift from Erdoğan

Getting a personalized revolver with his name engraved on it from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was “not what I expected,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday.

Carney said he “never saw it” until British Prime Minister Kier Starmer told him about the presents.

“I learned about it and then of course my colleagues told me, ‘Yeah, we had this.’ And it’s not what I expected,” he added.

Erdogan offered the engraved handguns as a gift to Carney and other NATO leaders at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkiye.

Carney said he gave Erdoğan a bottle of Canadian maple syrup in return.

Canadian government officials have not said what kind of handgun Carney was gifted, but say the pistol will be decommissioned and the gun will be placed in a museum. Officials also said the ammunition was left in Turkiye.

“I certainly don’t have a licence for it,” Carney said.

Any gift received by a politician worth more than $200 must be publicly declared, and any gift worth more than $1,000 must be forfeited to the Crown under Canada’s conflict of interest rules.

A placard in the gift box says this was the first type of revolver manufactured in Turkiye in the 1990s and that the commemorative firearms were made by Turkish firm MKE.

A spokesperson from Nauseda’s office said that his gifted revolver is planned for exhibition in the Presidential Palace, like many other gifts given to the head of state.

–with files from The Canadian Press