I've been wanting one of these relatively scarce and unusual carbines for a while and finally found a rather forlorn one on an auction site earlier this summer that I had to save. I could see in the auction pictures that it had active rust begging to be carded or scrubbed off with copper pennies and brass brushes, so I bought it and gave it a bit of TLC. Most of these look a bit rough (this one is certainly no exception), which I guess should be expected considering they were carried around the hills on horseback by foresters, and not soldiers trained in the care of firearms.
The marking on the receiver ring, "T.C. Orman" stands for Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Orman, or translated literally, Turkish Republic, Forestry. Approximately 8,000-10,000 Berthier M1907_15, chambered in 8x50 Lebel, were converted by the Turks in 1948 to these 21" carbines for use by the ~5,000 foresters (ca. 1948) of the Orman ve Su İşleri Bakanlığı (Ministry of Forest and Water Management). The Turkish forests are the source of Circassian Walnut, a local variant of the English Walnut (Juglans regia) that is highly prized for rifle stocks, among other things. Apparently poaching of trees was an issue but the Turks didn't want to arm their foresters with Mausers chambered the standard military cartridge of the era, 7.92x57mm, since that was widely available. Rather, they wanted to use these three shot carbines firing an odd cartridge only available from military stores in small quantities, such that if these were captured by poachers they would be of little use to them.
The origins of the Berthier long rifles in Turkey, from which the carbine was derived, are uncertain. One hypothesis is that they were captured during transit to the middle east (Iraq) during WWII. This example was certainly captured or purchased post 1932 as can be discerned by the N marking (faint mark above the "T.C.") on the receiver. That N signifies that the chamber was reamed out to accept the Modele 1932 N (Nouveau = new), which was the new Lebel cartridge. The 32N replaced the old brass bullet containing Balle D cartridge originally developed for the Lebel Modele 1886, and it holds the distinction of being the first smokeless powder cartridge adopted by any country's military.
To make the conversion, the barrels were shortened by 9", the stocks were cut down and the upper barrel band of obsolete M1905 Turkish Mausers were used. Sights were replaced, a shroud was added in front of the receiver, bolt turned down 30 degrees, etc. This example is "matching" as you can see the Turkish applied serial number on the receiver and bolt. Obviously it's a mish-mash of parts from Berthiers, but upon conversion by the Turks those two major components were serialized to match one another. The donor M1907_15 long rifle for this particular Forestry Carbine was made by the automobile manufacturer, Delaunay Belleville during WWI when French heavy industry was mobilized for production of armaments and supplies for the military.
If you want to read more, Patrick's (1886lebel) sticky on "Berthier carbine and rifle information" over on Gunboards is the best English language source, and the information here is largely derived from what I've read there.
THIS is a rifle...
THIS is a car