Head of Atatürk left surrounded by the country name "Republic of Turkey".

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) was a Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and founder of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first President from 1923 until his death in 1938. His surname, Atatürk (meaning "Father of the Turks"), was granted to him in 1934.

Value and date below, snowdrop on the left, star and crescent (right) above.

Snowdrops have been known since early times, being described by the classical Greek author Theophrastus in the fourth century BC in his "Enquiry into plants". The word "Snowdrop" may be derived from the German Schneetropfen (Snow-drop), the teardrop-shaped pearl earrings popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Snowdrops are extremely popular as symbols of spring and are traded more than any other wild-source ornamental bulb genus. Millions of bulbs are exported annually from Turkey.

The star and crescent is an iconographic symbol used in various historical contexts but most well known today as a symbol of the former Ottoman Empire and, by popular extension, the Islamic world. The Republic of Turkey has no official national emblem, but the star and crescent (Turkish: ay-yıldız "crescent-star") design from the national flag is in use as de facto emblem, among other things printed on Turkish passports, on Turkish identity cards and diplomatic missions of Turkey.