500 Livres

The Ottoman Public Debt Administration was not a bank — it was a European creditor consortium established by the 1881 Muharrem Decree to administer Ottoman revenues directly, bypassing Constantinople's treasury. That it issued currency at all reflects how severely the First World War had disrupted normal Ottoman finance. The 1916 emission came at a moment when the imperial government was fighting on multiple fronts and conventional credit had collapsed.

The OPDA issues of this period are among the more unusual wartime paper money instruments from any belligerent — obligations backed not by a central bank but by an international body technically empowered to collect Ottoman customs, salt, tobacco, and stamp revenues as debt service collateral.