1/4 Livre Turque

The Dette Publique Ottomane — the Ottoman Public Debt Administration — was a European-controlled financial body established in 1881 after the Empire defaulted on its foreign borrowings. That a wartime emergency currency would be issued under its authority rather than the Imperial treasury reflects the political awkwardness of Ottoman state finance in 1916: the administration nominally represented foreign creditor interests even as the Empire fought on the Central Powers side.

Small-denomination fractional notes like this quarter-livre were necessitated by acute coin shortages as metal was diverted to military use. Hoarding of metallic currency across the Levant was widespread by mid-war.