5 Piastres

The Dette Publique Ottomane — the Ottoman Public Debt Administration — was a foreign-controlled body established in 1881 after the empire's sovereign default, run primarily by European creditor interests. That this institution was issuing paper currency by 1917 reflects how badly the Ottoman financial apparatus had fractured under the strains of the First World War. The treasury was so depleted that even a foreign debt management office was pressed into producing emergency circulating notes.

Small-denomination issues like this were particularly subject to heavy wear and hoarding, and surviving examples in any reasonable condition are genuinely harder to find than the series' modest profile might suggest.