Istanbul
The wealth tax can be viewed as the culmination of an effort to win a
“second” War of Independence” by “liberating” the economy of the last
remaining non-Muslims and creating a Turkish bourgeoisie. The Turkish
government created the wealth tax in 1942 ostensibly to tax the excessive
profits of war profiteers whatever their religious or ethnic backgrounds.
In practice, its discriminatory implementation demonstrates how it was
aimed at creating a Muslim Turkish bourgeoisie at the expense of the
remaining foreign, Christian, Jewish, and Dönme businessmen and in-
dustrialists in Istanbul.^79 Of the two people charged the highest tax, one
was Jewish, the other Dönme.^80 As two-thirds of the tax was assessed in
Istanbul, and especially targeted the import and export trade, the tax
served as yet another method for the nationalist state to provincialize the
cosmopolitan city and pass from an economy based on private enterprise
to a state-controlled economy.^81 After 1923 , Istanbul remained the last
link of the Turkish state to the rest of Europe. Concentrated there were
what remained of Ottoman era wealth, capital, Christians, and Jews. By
taxing or confiscating this wealth, the state could strike the death blow
to cosmopolitanism. In 1925 , the architects of the republic had hoped
Muslim Turks would occupy the commercial and financial vacuum left by
the deported or murdered Greeks and Armenians. Instead, their place had
been filled by Jews and then Dönme.^82 The financial crisis of the war years
allowed the government to complete the goal of ruining their economic
position. “This law is also a revolutionary law,” the prime minister de-
clared. “We now face an opportunity which can win us our economic in-
dependence. We will in this way eliminate the foreigners [foreign citizens
resident in Turkey and non-Muslim citizens] who control our market and
give the Turkish market to the Turks.”^83 Only then would the main street
of Istanbul be Turkified, meaning that the Christian and Jewish names of
stores would be replaced by those of their Muslim business rivals.^84
The government and its citizens who implemented the wealth tax failed
to live up to the founding principle of secular citizenship and equality.
Converting to secularism, the Dönme gambled that losing their religion
would be offset by being treated as equals. Many Dönme abandoned
Dönme religion and gave up all that they valued, yet did not receive full
equality in return. The tax seems in some respects to be a transformation
of the poll tax (jizya) Christians and Jews had to pay in the Ottoman
Empire, one of the differences being the addition of an added racial quali-
fier making the Dönme liable. The Dönme were reminded not only of