50 Lira

Turkey's brass coinage of this period was a direct response to chronic inflation that rendered older cupro-nickel issues effectively worthless before their intended lifespans ended. The 50 Lira denomination, introduced in the late 1980s, was itself obsolete within a few years of its last striking — by the mid-1990s, inflation had eroded its purchasing power to a fraction of a US cent.

The switch to brass was partly economic: cheaper alloy costs at scale when minting enormous volumes of low-value coins for daily transactions. Turkey's Central Bank was issuing replacement coin series at an accelerating pace throughout this decade.