7 500 000 Lira Great bustard

Issued as part of Turkey's WWF-affiliated wildlife series, this coin commemorates the great bustard (*Otis tarda*), a bird whose Anatolian population had collapsed so severely by the late twentieth century that coordinated international conservation efforts were already underway. Turkey was one of the last remaining European and Near Eastern strongholds for the species.

The denomination itself — 7,500,000 lira — reflects the chronic inflation that plagued Turkey through the 1990s, ultimately forcing the 2005 redenomination that replaced 1,000,000 old lira with a single New Turkish Lira.