50 000 Livres

The Ottoman Empire entered World War I in late October 1914, and the financial strain was immediate. The empire had been functionally bankrupt for years, its monetary system propped up by foreign loans that evaporated with the war. These high-denomination kaime notes were issued through the Imperial Treasury rather than a functioning central bank — the Ottoman Public Debt Administration, controlled largely by European creditors, was no longer a viable instrument for wartime finance.

Rapid inflation followed. By the Armistice of Mudros in 1918, Ottoman paper currency had collapsed in purchasing power, and much of the circulating issue was repudiated outright during the subsequent transition to Turkish Republican currency in the 1920s.