20 Lira 100th Anniversary of the battle of Kut-Ul Amare

The Battle of Kut, fought between December 1915 and April 1916, ended with the surrender of some 13,000 British and Indian troops under General Townshend — the largest capitulation of British forces since Yorktown. Ottoman forces under Halil Pasha had besieged Kut-al-Amara for 147 days. The defeat carried enormous symbolic weight in Istanbul and remains a point of national pride in Turkish military historiography, which explains its selection as a centennial commemorative subject a full century later.

The oxidized finish is deliberate — applied to enhance relief contrast on struck silver issues of this type within the Turkish commemorative program of the mid-2010s.