Last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney handed Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan one of Canada’s best-known exports: a bottle of maple syrup. Erdoğan countered with something considerably harder to pack in a carry-on: a personalized .357 Magnum revolver, engraved with Carney’s name, along with six rounds of ammunition.
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“Not what I expected,” the prime minister joked. The exchange happened at the close of the 2026 North Atlantic Treaty Organization Summit in Ankara, and he conceded his own contribution seemed a bit underpowered. The comment went viral, but it captured something of the calculus behind the objects exchanged by heads of government.
What may seem mere ceremonial protocol often tells a story about the relationship it is meant to represent and sometimes shape. A gift can project power, flatter a counterpart, signal shared ambitions, or break the ice—literally. Earlier this year, Carney was on a ten-day Indo-Pacific tour to cultivate new trade relationships. Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi skipped the classic Hagiyaki pottery and lacquer sake cups in favour of a Japanese-made hockey stick. Her team had done their homework. Carney was a former college goaltender. Within weeks, he was using it to run drills with players from the Professional Women’s Hockey League alongside Finnish president Alexander Stubb.
Carney seemed surprised by Erdoğan’s gun, but it was a fitting choice for a summit devoted to rearmament. Made by a Turkish weapons manufacturer, it doubled as an unusually blunt message to NATO leaders, underscoring the country’s ambition to become a global arms dealer. It also did what all good gifts try to do: leave a lasting impression.
Anthropologists, says Jovan Kurbalija, “found traces as far back as the Stone Age of tribes exchanging gifts as a carrier of the message of trust.” A diplomat in the former Yugoslavia, Kurbalija is founding director of Diplo, a global nonprofit based in Malta and Geneva that trains other diplomats in how technology—from artificial intelligence to internet governance—is reshaping foreign affairs. But even in a digital era, a great deal of statecraft is conducted through items that carry meanings too delicate, or too provocative, to state outright. International relationships, argues Kurbalija, still depend on symbolism, and studying the practice of gift giving can help avoid costly missteps, from cultural faux pas to overlooked political signals.
The gifts themselves amount to a parallel chronicle of modern history. Indeed, follow the trail of offerings and you can watch the twentieth century unfold in miniature. During the royal tour of Canada in 1939, the king and queen were showered with Indigenous carvings, ceremonial regalia, Hudson’s Bay blankets, and regional handicrafts. In 1940, then German chancellor Adolf Hitler bestowed a gleaming Mercedes-Benz G4—one of the most exclusive vehicles at the time—on Spanish president Francisco Franco in hopes of wooing Spain to join the fascist alliance. Decades later, following the Apollo missions, United States president Richard Nixon distributed “Goodwill Moon Rocks” in 1973 across 135 countries, recasting the Space Race into a token of peace.
Not every tribute is part of a charm offensive. Take Russian president Vladimir Putin’s encounters with then German chancellor Angela Merkel. A dog bite had left Merkel with an intense fear of the animal. Before the leaders’ first encounter back in 2006, her staff asked the Kremlin to refrain from bringing Putin’s black Labrador retriever, Konni, who often accompanied him to official engagements. Putin responded by giving Merkel a black-and-white toy plush dog, reportedly quipping, “It did not bite.”
But a year later, as relations with Germany soured amid Russia’s increasing use of energy supplies as political leverage, Putin brought along his pet. In photos of the sit-down, one can see the Labrador sniff around Merkel’s chair as she smiles nervously. Putin later claimed to have not known about the fear. Most observers drew a different conclusion. “It was basically a provocation,” says Kurbalija, a bid “to intimidate the other side. He wanted to destabilize her.”
Few leaders, of course, are as willing to turn diplomatic convention into psychological warfare. “Citizens are interested in seeing their leaders build ties with their foreign counterparts,” says Minister Hideaki Ishii, the chargé d’affaires ad interim at the Canadian Embassy of Japan, “and that gateway starts with the lighter things.” Most establish rapport by speaking directly to a leader’s tastes. Knowing that Bill Clinton was an avid saxophonist, for example, Czech president Václav Havel presented the US leader with a Czech-made instrument.
A bit of vanity stroking doesn’t hurt. Justin Trudeau was a case in point. As one of the more photogenic government leaders of his generation, the former prime minister repeatedly found his image reflected back at him. Trudeau was reported to have declared at least seventeen likenesses of himself to the federal ethics commissioner during his time as prime minister. These included, the Canadian Press found, a portrait painted on goat skin from Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed Ali and also one carved as a seal from Chinese president Xi Jinping.
Kurbalija argues state gifts have evolved from bureaucratic props of goodwill into hyper-personalized instruments of strategic influence. “We’ve become a very transactional society,” he says. Of course, reciprocity has always been a part of the exercise. But where once a gift bound one leader to another in a largely private ritual of obligation—the Norwegian royal family giving Franklin D. Roosevelt an art deco tea set in 1939 or West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer giving Dwight D. Eisenhower a painting in 1956—the performance is now engineered for cameras, headlines, and social media. “Both sides want a public image about the relevance of the gift,” says Kurbalija.
US president Donald Trump offers perhaps the clearest illustration of this logic. Taking notice of the president’s well-documented love of golf, and his penchant for anything gilded, Japanese prime minister Takaichi staged a carefully choreographed presentation, during their first official meeting, of a golf bag signed by champion Hideki Matsuyama, a putter once owned by her predecessor Shinzo Abe, and a gold-plated golf ball. (The gifts coincided with an agreement on critical minerals.)
The approach reached its extreme in 2025, when Qatar offered Trump a $400 million Boeing 747. “That was probably the most radical gift in recent times,” says Kurbalija. “It’s also obvious the Qataris wanted to play on Trump’s love of grand gestures.” For a tiny country that has long pursued an outsized diplomatic role, the luxury jet was a calculated investment in the president’s sense of spectacle. Trump embraced the effort, dismissing ethical concerns by telling reporters he would be “stupid” not to accept a free plane.
Erdoğan’s pistol created immediate headaches. Carney never took possession of it. Instead, it was immediately transferred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where they deactivated it in accordance with Canadian firearms rules. The accompanying ammunition was left behind in Türkiye.