Istanbul
Estate of the Provisional Government of Thessaloníki during 1917 , who
is now residing in Athens. This [former] director informs the paper “that
when in 1917 the aforementioned real estate property of Kapancı was to
be confiscated by the Greek state, because it allegedly belonged to an Aus-
trian citizen (as Kapancı led others to believe) and therefore a citizen of an
enemy country, the aforementioned father of Kapancı [Ahmet Kapancı]
came to the Department of Public Land and declared that he was not
an Austrian citizen, and he produced a relevant certificate of his Greek
identity.” The author of the article asserts that it “is therefore worth ques-
tioning how the department did not consider this fact and thoughtlessly
proceeded in restoring the property of Kapancı, which is estimated to be
[worth] several million [drachmas] and which should have devolved to the
refugees, because it belongs to an Ottoman Greek citizen and therefore
an exchangeable person.”^20 Kostas Tomanas’s Chroniko tēs Thessalonikēs
[Chronicle of Thessaloníki], written during World War II, asserts that
“Turks departing from the villages and towns of Macedonia sold whatever
they could and came to Thessaloníki [en route to Istanbul].... However,
many rich notables suddenly ‘discovered’ their Albanian origins, and with
the help of cunning lawyers and the bribing of senior civil servants, they
managed to remain in Greece and retain their huge properties,” such as in
the case of the Kapancı family.^21
The impression given the reader of Tomanas’s history and of the final
Efēmeris tōn Balkaniōn article from the 1920 s is that the Dönme, in par-
ticular members of the Kapancı family, switched their citizenship at
will according to whichever way the political winds were blowing. The
Kapancı had become Austro-Hungarian subjects in the late Ottoman
Empire in order to benefit from treaty clauses that gave residents who
were not Ottoman subjects great commercial and juridical advantages.
In the autumn of 1888 , on the orders of the Austrian government, the
Austrian consul had organized a train trip from Salonika to Vienna and
Budapest, which had included many “fabulously rich merchants,” hon-
orary consuls, and “the Ottoman Kapancı, of Jewish origin (Dönme),
who was president of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce.”^22 In Buda-
pest, Mehmet Kapancı had delivered one of the most important speeches
launching the chamber.
The Greek Foreign Ministry took up the matter of Kapancı citizenship
and property rights. The Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in
Athens contains two files on the subject. The first, from 1934 , is labeled