100 Livres Turques

The Dette Publique Ottomane — the Ottoman Public Debt Administration — was a European-controlled body established in 1881 after the empire defaulted on its foreign borrowings. That a debt management council staffed largely by foreign creditors was issuing wartime currency by 1917 says a great deal about the fiscal collapse of the late Ottoman state. With the treasury exhausted and the German alliance offering limited relief, high-denomination notes like this one were a stopgap against accelerating inflation that would only worsen after the armistice.

The embossed seal was the primary authentication measure — a fragile one given the counterfeiting pressures of the period.