The Turkish State Mint, officially named the General Directorate of Mint and Printing, is responsible for the production of circulating and commemorative coins, gold coins, official seals, medals, tokens, visas, tax stamps, passports and all kinds of valuable paper for the Republic of Turkey.
It is the successor of the largest mint of the Ottoman Empire, which was called at the time just the "Constantinople Mint", the Ottoman Empire officially retaining this name of the city to the last. In Turkish it was قسطنطینية (transcribed as Kostantiniyye), so the mint for Ottoman coinages issued there is usually listed as the "Kostantiniyye Mint". The earliest mention of the mint is in a document by Sultan Mehmed II (Mehmed the Conqueror) in 1467.
On a number of occasions, the mint marked the visit of a Sultan to some place with commemorative coins carrying a mint mark with the name of the place, such as Bursa, Edirne, Kosova, Manistir or Salonika, as if the coins were struck there. |
