Reviews CANIK TTI Combat Smoke: Turkish John Wick [REVIEW] Dave Merrill September 5, 2025 Join the Conversation At RECOIL, we review every product fairly and without bias. Making a purchase through one of our links may earn us a small commission, and helps support independent gun reviews. Read our affiliate policy. Find out more about how we test products. Turkey imports more firearms to the United States than any other nation, and in the 21st century they’ve earned a reputation for producing affordable arms — and Canik is the reason why anyone takes them seriously. It was 2015 and RECOIL Issue 18 when we first covered Canik — we were impressed with them, and it’s only gotten better since then. In the intervening years we’re seen Canik refine their designs and make inroads into more markets. In 2022, when Nils Jonasson took first place at USPSA Limited Nationals in minor division with a polymer Canik SFx Rival, trouncing a whole crowd equipped with more-traditional competitive pistols—a whole lot more people took notice, and it opened a new audience. So, when a collaboration between Hollywood trainer and competitive shooter Taran Butler and Canik was announced in 2024, along with this 2025 follow-up, it was surprising, but not too surprising. CAIK TTI COMBAT SMOKE SPECS Caliber: 9mm Capacity: 18, 21 Weight (unloaded): 29.5 ounces Barrel Length: 4.6 inches Overall Length: 7.85 inches Height: 5.87 inches Width: 1.41 inches MSRP: $950 PROS: Punching above the price point Loads of extras in the box Performance pistol CONS: “Combat” only in the movies Palmetto State Armory$950Academy$950 FEATURES & DETAILS Butler originally made a name for himself in the world of competition, but he didn’t really hit the public consciousness until videos of Keanu Reeves running and gunning on his range training for John Wick hit the internet. Now Wick is an entire franchise, and a train of celebrities like Halle Berry and Michael B Jordan have made appearances with Butler doing the same. Pistol competitions are about shooting performance, Hollywood is where aesthetics are everything. So, it makes sense that anything that’s a combination of the two is going to look a bit more like a racecar than a daily driver. The presentation part of this pistol starts with the case. No cardboard or nylon here, but a legitimate hard plastic Pelican-like case you might actually use; if not for a pistol, then to protect something more delicate like a camera during transportation. There are even holes for padlocks making it suitable for flying, though you’ll likely want to drill it larger to accommodate a larger padlock shackle if you do. For the gun itself, Canik started out with their full-size METE as a base, building and modifying with Taran from there. The new polymer frame has aggressive triangular textures for grip, a double undercut trigger guard, modular backstraps, removable aluminum magwell, and 3-slot Picatinny rail up front. The magazine release is not ambidextrous but it is swappable for lefties (though this process can be difficult if you haven’t performed it before). The slide stop/release is unobtrusive and fully mirrored, being equally easy to use with either hand. The included case is among the best in the business and comes full of accessories to include a holster. The trigger features a drop-safety dingus like most any modern, safe striker-gun, but here it’s a pad that covers the entire face rather than a bitty central blade. It takes virtually no weight to engage but does allow your finger to settle prior to the pull. This isn’t a 1911 trigger — nothing is but a 1911, but it’s a short pull followed by a wall with a very predictable, repeatable break our scale measured just above 3.5 pounds. The reset itself is extremely short, making for easy, fast follow-ups. The slide is where you really start to see the California tuner-car aesthetics. There are lightning cuts and serrations and windows and contrasting colors. The original TTI Combat was black and brown, and the smoke variant adds a lot of gray but swaps the black barrel for bronze. Most of the engravings, TTI logos, and other markings are color-filled to pop more. It’s unapologetic in its overtness. The included irons are excellent, so far as irons go. The blacked-out rear sight is serrated to reduce glare and is paired with a green fiber-optic front. The takedown procedure is a little different than standard but it’s all the same basic parts. Of course, this is a pistol meant to be run with glass on top. The included optic plates are plastic, a fact that doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence but in practice it doesn’t usually matter all that much — provided everything is properly torqued and if the optic body itself isn’t also plastic. The plates cover RMS, RMSc, and RMR footprints, but if you don’t mind just running with screws you can forgo the plates entirely for RMSc optics to go as low as possible, which is what we did with our enclosed SIG Romeo-X Compact. The downside to this being that the irons eat more of the window. COMPENSATING FOR SOMETHING The TTI Combat is the first pistol produced by Canik that comes with a comp from the factory. When it comes to attaching compensators, the easy button is to simply screw them onto an already-threaded barrel. There are some downsides to this approach, however. Ensuring that the comp is properly indexed can be a pain, and it also requires that the pistol only be sold in states where threaded barrels are unregulated. The interrupted thread pattern on the barrel allows the comp to QD. As this is a Taran Tactical gun, and Taran Butler himself resides in California where a threaded pistol is a no-go, it only makes sense that Canik sought to forgo these woes with a different approach. The muzzle end of the spiral-fluted barrel itself is octagonal, or more of a rounded square. An interrupted ACME thread is used as a quick-disconnect mechanism for the compensator, just like the silencer on old suppressed Soviet PB pistols. The barrel has a port cut into the top to get gas to the comp and there’s an alignment notch on the bottom that corresponds to a spring-loaded tab on the compensator itself. All told, it’s simple to remove with the included punch during disassembly. Does it work? The top port helps keep the muzzle down along with the added weight of the comp itself, but it would be better if there were a real expansion chamber inside to make this a real brake. In short: yes, but it could be better. ACCESSORIES & RANGE Once you wander outside the realm of popular pistols, accessories — especially holsters — really can be a problem. Thankfully, Canik has always impressed us by including a lot of accessories, and the TTI Combat Smoke is no exception. Inside the included case you have two magazines, two spare backstraps, three plastic optic plates, a mini toolkit that looks like a pistol, trigger lock, punch, cleaning kit, mag loader, low-power recoil spring assembly, and a challenge coin. There’s also a glossy full-color manual and the other administrative stuff you expect with a new pistol. A manual someone put time into sure beats a card with a QR code we so often see. The rule used to be that reliable striker guns couldn’t have good triggers. Then it became that safe striker guns couldn’t have good triggers. Rules are meant to be broken and limits pushed, and this one pushes the limits of what a striker trigger can be. It’s clear that Canik spent considerable time on trigger design, balancing the strength of their springs and angles of engagement to ensure everything is refined. While everything is getting better, there’s still no free lunch, unfortunately. Though the TTI Combat Smoke you see on this page has had no issues with ammunition ignition, the same can’t be said for the one we featured in CONCEALMENT Issue 39 — at least not after a couple thousand rounds were put through it. Keep your eye out for light strikes, and if they happen just swap out that striker spring. Mags, backstraps, optic plates, and tools all included. We did have some initial feeding issues, which is when we discovered why the low-power recoil spring assembly is included. After that even the cheap ammo was OK except when everything was totally topped off with the extended mag on a closed slide; sometimes that first round had a bit of a problem properly feeding. This isn’t all that uncommon, and given our experience with other TTI magazine extensions, will go away with some more use. In the meantime, a simple download of one round fixed it. The TTI Combat Smoke is accurate and easy to shoot, and our constant question is why it took so long for everyone else to notice Canik. LOOSE ROUNDS The word “combat” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, because magwells, match triggers, compensators, and covered in lightning cuts does not a combat pistol make. You could think of it as a synonym for durable, or call it a flashback to when everything was marketed as “tactical,” to include the likes of lunchboxes and luggage tags. Our feeding problems were fixed by using the included low-powered spring. A more accurate name would be the “TTI Comp” because Taran is a competitor and it’s the first Canik with a compensator. But well, the TTI John Wick guns had “Combat” in the name, too. Speaking of names, while the TTI Combat Smoke is indeed a performance pistol and brings that forth in spades, it would be silly to think that there isn’t an upcharge for the name attached to it. Those who are fans of Taran Tactical through TikTok and John Wick are part of the target market here. If you want similar performance (sans comp) at a lower price, you can do what Nils Jonasson did and run a Canik Rival. (Bonus points if you beat the brakes off of other competitors with it, too.) Palmetto State Armory$950Academy$950 And yet, here we are talking about price without mentioning it. Full MSRP without an optic is under a thousand bucks. While Canik guns have always hit higher than their label would let on — and even a premium collaboration didn’t skyrocket this one into oblivion — someone who doesn’t give a rip about John Wick but likes the looks and wants the performance will still like putting rounds through this pistol. Why you can trust RECOIL Since our founding in 2012, RECOIL remains the premier firearms lifestyle publication for the modern shooting enthusiast. We deliver cutting-edge coverage of guns, gear, accessories and technology. We go beyond basic reviews, providing no B.S. buyer’s guides, hands-on testing and expert analysis on everything from firearms and survival equipment to watches and vehicles. 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