50 Lira Osman Hamdi Bey

Osman Hamdi Bey is best remembered today as a painter, but he founded the Istanbul Archaeological Museum in 1881 and pushed through the Ottoman Antiquities Regulation of 1884 — legislation that effectively ended the legal export of archaeological finds from Ottoman territory, directly undercutting the acquisitions of European museums that had been stripping Anatolian sites for decades. The commemorative honoring him arrived 101 years after his death.