10 Livres Turques

The Dette Publique Ottomane — the Ottoman Public Debt Administration — was a European-controlled financial body established in 1881 after the Sublime Porte's catastrophic 1875 default. That a foreign creditor syndicate, not the Ottoman treasury, was issuing currency by 1915–1917 tells you everything about the empire's fiscal condition in its final years. These wartime notes were necessitated by a complete collapse of public confidence in Ottoman financing and the near-impossibility of importing quality printed currency through a wartime naval blockade.

The cotton substrate and watermark security were deliberate signals of seriousness to a skeptical public, though widespread counterfeiting remained a documented problem across the series.