Erdogan gives every Nato leader a gun as farewell gift

The Turkish president presented each Nato leader with an engraved revolver bearing their name and a box of live ammunition after hosting the alliance’s summit in Ankara.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan also gave each leader a letter waiving Turkey’s export controls on the gun to allow them to take it out of the country.

Despite this, Sir Keir Starmer said he had to have the weapon decommissioned and leave it in Ankara because it could not legally be brought back to the UK on his government aircraft.

Gifts for Nato leaders are usually more conventional.

In 2016, at the Nato summit in Warsaw, the official gift bags included bottles of traditional Polish honey vodka, local chocolates and custom-printed postage stamps.

Two years earlier, when the UK hosted the summit in Newport, Wales, world leaders including Barack Obama, it handed out gift bags containing wool socks, bottles of Penderyn single-malt whisky and Welsh waffles.

The two-day summit, which started on Tuesday, brought together leaders from all 32 Nato member states, including Donald Trump.

In his closing remarks at the summit, the US president opened with effusive praise for Mr Erdogan, describing him as a “great man, a great leader … a friend of mine”.

He said the Turkish president was “a strong person, a very strong personality”, adding that this was why he led such a “great country”.

Mr Trump also praised the “tremendous love” and “tremendous unity” among Nato leaders at the summit – despite having thrown the meeting into disarray hours earlier by demanding that the US cut trade ties with Spain.

He described Madrid as a “terrible partner” in Nato and criticised allies for failing to support the war against Iran.

Mr Trump initially promised to sell F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, although later said he had not fully made up his mind after Greece and Israel criticised the proposed deal.

At the end of the summit, Mr Erdogan said he held fruitful talks with Mr Trump.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]