5 Piastres

The Dette Publique Ottomane — the Ottoman Public Debt Administration — was not a bank but a foreign creditor body established in 1881 to manage repayment of the empire's defaulted external debt, largely controlled by European bondholders. That it ended up issuing emergency currency in 1916 reflects how badly the Ottoman financial apparatus had fractured under wartime strain. The Imperial Treasury and the Bank-i Osmani could not keep pace with demand for small-denomination notes, so this body, never designed for monetary functions, was pressed into service.

Small-denomination wartime issues from this series circulated hard and survived poorly.