The story of the Turkish MP5 has all the makings of a Tom Clancy novel. There’s a relationship dating back to the Ottoman and German empires, Cold War geopolitics, ambulance-chasing lawyers, modern-day corruption, and even a trip to a Turkish prison for one of the players involved.
If you’re so inclined, its roots can be traced all the way back to 1887, when the first Mausers were delivered to the government in Istanbul from the factory in Spandau. A version of the Gewehr 71, that particular rifle could itself be used as shorthand for the myriad of rebellions, bush wars, proxy conflicts, and global intrigue which abounded during the period of the Great Game — smuggled to participants in the Boer wars, the Irish rebellion, the German Revolution, and the Italo-Ethiopian war. But we digress.
Having previously established
