50 Livres Turques

The Dette Publique Ottomane — the Ottoman Public Debt Administration — was not a state bank but a foreign creditor body established after the 1881 Muharrem Decree, through which the Ottoman government formally surrendered control of key revenue streams to European bondholders. Its authority to issue banknotes during the First World War was an emergency measure born of the empire's collapsing fiscal position, not any conventional banking mandate.

By 1918, the Ottoman treasury was exhausted. Notes of this series circulated alongside those of the Imperial Ottoman Bank and various Kaime issues in a monetary environment so fragmented that exchange rates between nominally parallel instruments fluctuated wildly in the markets of Istanbul. The 50 Livres denomination represented serious purchasing power — and serious inflation risk in the same breath.

Printed by the state printing works in Istanbul, the series was among the last issued before the armistice of Mudros in October 1918 effectively ended the empire's independent financial operations.