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Old December 19, 2011, 03:13 PM   #3
James K
Member In Memoriam
 
Join Date: March 17, 1999
Posts: 24,383
Briefly, "T C" stands for Turkiye Cumhuriyet, or Turkish Republic; it is the equivalent of "U.S." on an American rifle.

The rifle is a Model 1898 Mauser, probably originally made in Germany or Czechoslovakia, maybe a WWI rifle procured from Germany . (Turkey never made complete Mauser rifles, though they made barrels and other parts.)

Ankara is the capital of Turkey; Kirikkale is a suburb and the location of the Askari Fabrika or military factory that reworked the rifle in 1943.

In the late 1930's the Turks realized that they had a mish-mash of rifle types dating back to 1890 and in two different calibers, 7.65x54 and 8x57JS. So they revamped and reworked them to use the 8x57JS (German 7.9) and have as uniform appearance as possible, basically that of the German K.98k. All the resulting rifles, regardless of origin, were called the Model 1938.

That is one of them.

Jim
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