20 Piastres Law of 22 December RC1331

The Law of 22 December RC1331 (1915 in the Gregorian calendar) authorized emergency small-denomination paper to fill the gap left by hoarded and melted coinage — a problem that plagued the empire's internal economy from the first year of the war. Silver had largely disappeared from circulation by mid-1915, and even copper was being stockpiled. Notes like this 20 Piastres issue were a direct administrative response to that shortage, not routine monetary management.

Printed domestically under wartime conditions, the quality of paper and execution was noticeably inferior to pre-war Ottoman issues produced by European security printers. The watermark, while present, is often faint or inconsistently positioned across surviving examples.