Turkey issues new notes on 01.01.2009

The name of Turkey’s currency has reverted from “new Turkish lira” (TRY) to “Turkish lira” (TRL) as of 1 January 2009, necessitating the issuance of new banknotes and coins. Turkey last changed the currency by removing six zeroes on 1 January 2005, at a cost of US$300 million. This new move is expected to incur similar costs. Durmuş Yılmaz, governor of the Turkish Central Bank, indicated that a new denomination, the TRL200, would begin circulation as well. The new notes have different sizes as a measure against forgery and to facilitate their use by blind people. The depiction of the country’s founder, Kemal Atatürk, stays on the front of all banknotes; the new designs were unveiled 3 October 2008.

All of the notes have dots in the upper left to assist the visually impaired, microtext, a solid security thread, a holographic stripe, registration device, Omron rings, a latent image, Atatürk as watermark with electrotype denomination, and an iridescent stripe on back. The notes are printed by the Central Bank Banknote Printing House in Ankara.

While each banknote has a portrait of Ataturk, the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey, on one side, there are portraits of other prominent Turks on the other sides of the banknotes as listed below:

5 TL banknote: Prof. Dr. Aydin Sayili
10 TL banknote: Prof. Dr. Cahit Arf
20 TL banknote: Architect Kemaleddin
50 TL banknote: Ms. Fatma Aliye
100 TL banknote: Itri
200 TL banknote: Yunus Emre

Aydin Sayili (1913-1993) was a historian of science who studied under George Sarton at Harvard. His career was aided by chance meeting with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, whom he impressed enough to receive a state-supported scholarship to attend graduate school at Harvard.

Cahit Arf (1910-1997) was a Turkish mathematician. He is known for the Arf invariant of a quadratic form in characteristic 2 (applied in knot theory and surgery theory) in topology, the Hasse-Arf theorem in ramification theory, and Arf rings.

Architect Kemaleddin (1870-1927) was a prominent Turkish architect. He is a graudate of civil engineering and studied extensively in Germany. He repaired many mosques. He was chosen as a member to the British Royal Architects Institute. He constructed the Bostanci, Bebek, Yesilkoy and Kutlutepe mosques.

Ms. Fatma Aliye (1862-1939) was the first female novelist in Turkish literature and Islamic geography. She was the daughter of last grand Ottoman histrorian Ahmad Cavdat Pasha.

Itri (1630 or 1640-1712) is a well known and important Turkish composer.

Yunus Emre (1238?-1320?) was a Turkish poet and Sufi mystic. He has exercised immense influence on Turkish literature, from his own day until the present.

Courtesy of Ömer Yalçinkaya (omeryalcinkayacollectionshop on eBay).