The Wealth Tax (Varlık Vergisi) Affair – Documents From the British National Archives

The present volume studies the issues surrounding the Turkish wartime “Wealth Tax” (1942-1943) and its implementation. As its name implies, the Wealth Tax (Varlık Vergisi), was originally conceived as a tool for taxing the extreme wealth being made through wartime profiteering and black market operations in Turkey during the Second World War. In practice, however, it was imposed in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion, in essence representing a sort of “economic warfare” carried out by the Turkish regime against the country’s non-Muslim population, appropriating much of their wealth and shattering all the hopes and aspirations for eventual religious and ethnic equality that had been held out by the Turkish Constitution some twenty years before.This study is based on documents gleaned from the National Archives of the United Kingdom and provides a detailed and chronological account of this tragic event.