5000 Lira U.N. Decade for Women

The U.N. Decade for Women ran from 1976 to 1985, a program that generated an enormous wave of commemorative coinage from member states — Turkey among them. Most of these issues were struck primarily for the export collector market rather than domestic circulation, and this piece is no exception.

Turkey's participation carried a particular edge: the decade coincided with the aftermath of the 1980 military coup, during which the junta suspended civil institutions while women's legal status remained formally protected under Atatürk's 1934 franchise reforms — a tension the commemorative issue quietly sidesteps.