Restaurateur Mehmet S. Tezcakin has collected an impressive array of Ottoman currency and now he wants to donate it to Turkey’s Presidential Library
On Sultanahmet’s Divanyolu Street, restaurants line the road enticing hungry tourists and locals alike.
Climbing up the narrow steps of the restaurant, past the sizzle of the kofte on the grill, the smell of cooking wafts by, as bustling waiters in white shirts rush to the customers. He wants his collection to go to a good home, he says, quoting the saying “Adam mezara, mal mezata” that translates as “a man to his grave, and his earthly goods to the auction house”.Mehmet Tezcakin is a cancer patient, having battled the illness twice already, and gone through a laryngectomy which doesn’t seem to have stopped him from trying to communicate the urgency of his plea. He wears a bandanna on his neck, covering up the operation scars, and whispers with a quiet rasp.
Tezcakin also has currency issued during the Republican Era. Some of the currency bear the Turkish Republic’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s visage or other rural scenes, along with Turkish spelled in Arabic script, from before the official script of Turkey got changed to the Latin alphabet.
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