20 000 Lira Battle of Gallipoli

Issued seventy-five years after the 1915 campaign, this coin commemorates a battle that carries entirely different meanings on either side of the Aegean. For Turkey, Gallipoli was a rare Ottoman defensive victory and the moment Mustafa Kemal — then a lieutenant colonel — first emerged as a military figure of consequence, reportedly telling his men at Chunuk Bair that he was not ordering them to attack but to die, buying time until reinforcements arrived. That order, and the ground held, became foundational to the nationalist mythology that would carry Kemal to the presidency of the republic he founded in 1923.