Author: Leonidas Koumakis | Publication Date: 2025-07-02 |
The source of this text is Leonidas Koumakis, a Greek jurist and author known for his articles on Greco-Turkish relations, historical memory, and national issues. This specific text has been published on various patriotic or nationally oriented websites, such as infognomonpolitics.gr, and concerns Turkish policy against non-Muslim minorities during World War II, focusing on the Varlık Vergisi (Wealth Tax) imposed in 1942.
This is an opinion piece, not an academic historical study. It carries a clear national and denunciatory tone, utilizing emotionally charged vocabulary. It contains elements of historical truth, particularly regarding the policies of Ismet Inonu and the “Varlık”, which has also been documented by Turkish historians such as Rıdvan Akar, but it also incorporates subjective interpretations and characterizations.
Christmas 1942: Turkey’s Stab in the Back Against the Greeks!
Greece, brought to its knees under the Nazi Occupation, was experiencing the worst famine since Antiquity, with thousands dying of starvation in most major urban centers. Turkey, since June 1941, had signed a “treaty of friendship” with Nazi Germany, and a year later (June 1942), a trade agreement to supply the Nazi forces with the essential metals needed for weapons manufacturing (especially chromium).*
THE TWO BLOODTHIRSTY TURKS WHO DEEPLY HATED HELLENISM AND DID EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO ANNIHILATE IT TIME AND AGAIN! ON THE RIGHT, ISMET INONU, THE “ETERNAL SERVANT” AND EXECUTER OF EVERY MURDEROUS PLAN OF MUSTAFA KEMAL…
Those who have long monitored Turkey’s trajectory—from the Young Turk movement (1908) to the present day—believe that all of Turkey’s timeless, decisive actions share specific, distinct characteristics: They are insidious (stabs in the back), calculated, utterly audacious, and usually carried out from a position of safety within a pre-existing framework that they deem to offer the “ideal opportunity.” If they fail, they have absolutely no problem making a “180-degree turn.”
Ismet Inonu had already caught the scent of the “ideal opportunity” to eliminate the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews who had managed to survive in Constantinople and were still living in Turkey—much like a shark smells human blood from a shipwreck… The entire planet was preoccupied with World War II, Greece was at war, and Turkey, hiding behind its tactful neutrality and the “treaty of friendship” with Nazi Germany (which had been ready since early 1941), had its hands untied. Therefore, the “ideal opportunity” was there.
Thus, in May 1941, just a few weeks after the German invasion of Greece—which had begun on April 6, 1941—Turkey declared a general mobilization of non-Muslim youths aged 20 to 45. The entire flower, the cream of Constantinople’s non-Muslim youth, was driven into the depths of Anatolia with the goal of their physical extermination. The sharp disagreement of the duo I. Inonu – S. Saracoglu (Prime Minister) with Marshal Fevzi Cakmak, who feared the potential consequences of a new genocide, prevented the cold-blooded execution of the conscripts; thus, the mobilization was restricted to forced labor.
President Ismet Inonu, however, was far from satisfied. He summoned Prime Minister Sukru Saracoglu and tasked him with the economic or physical destruction of the non-Muslim populations. The “weapon” was to be an extraordinary wealth tax, which would be so outrageous that the “debtors” would first find it impossible to pay, and subsequently, they would be generously granted the “opportunity” to settle it through forced labor.
It is estimated that to pay off the tax imposed on every Greek, Armenian, or Jew that could not be settled, two to three hundred years of forced labor would be required! The Turkish Prime Minister lost no time. He carefully planned the steps that needed to be taken, one by one: First, the appropriate domestic climate inside Turkey had to be prepared.
The Turkish press gradually began unleashing a campaign of hate and fanaticism against non-Muslims—Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. All of Turkey’s woes were piled onto the shoulders of the minorities, along with grievances over the economic prosperity they enjoyed. Second, a law prepared in 1914 by the Young Turks for the “development of the Turkish economy” through the looting of Christian properties in Turkey was retrieved. It was dusted off, rewritten, supplemented, and presented by the Deputy Minister of Finance, Esaat Tekeli, to Prime Minister Saracoglu. The latter requested Fuat Agrali—notorious for the massacres of Greek civilians—to create a small directorate to implement the law.
Its members were appointed as Faik Ökte (Director of Finance for Istanbul) and Mumtaz Tarham, whom Fuat Agrali introduced to the Turkish Prime Minister with the words: “These two brave lads (!…) will implement our law in Constantinople and Smyrna.” The next step was a secret meeting of the ruling Republican People’s Party, during which the Turkish Prime Minister guaranteed that the new law for the extraordinary property tax, the ‘Varlık’, would in practice be applied only to minorities. He explained that, for appearance’s sake, there had to be a tax for Turks too, but it would be small and symbolic, just to maintain a basic pretense.
Immediately after, the Turkish Parliament voted Law 4305 with 17 articles into effect in a single session on November 12, 1942. Law 4305 officially and in a racist manner segregated taxpayers into four categories: Muslims, Giaours (Greeks, Armenians, Jews), those who changed their faith and became Muslims (Donme), and finally, all foreign nationals. Six-member committees were established to determine the tax amount for each individual taxpayer (two tax officials, two local government members who were fanatical members of the People’s Party, and two Muslims—members of the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce).
In his book The Tragedy of the Varlık Tax (Varlık Vergisi Faciası), the Istanbul Finance Director Faik Ökte describes the manner in which the tax amount was decided, after the victim’s file was reviewed and their religion and ethnicity were verified: “How much will this one pay? 500,000 liras,” one committee member suggested. “No, no. 1,000,000 liras,” countered another. “Pick a number in the middle so we can finish up,” a third intervened. If a Christian taxpayer was slapped with a 5,000 lira tax for a small shop, the Muslim in the exact adjacent shop was hit with a tax of only 5 liras…
The imposed tax amount was subject to no appeal. The payment deadline was set at 15 days. Any delay in payment meant a 1% fine for the first week, 2% for the second, and so on. After the lapse of one month, the confiscation of real estate property followed, along with arrest and deportation to forced labor camps with a daily “wage” of 2 liras, which was “offset” against the deportee’s debt. The tax lists were published by the Turkish authorities on the eve of Christmas 1942. Panic spread through the terrified minority, filling all newspapers with classified ads for the sale of properties belonging to Greeks, Armenians, and Jews.
According to the records of Istanbul Finance Director Faik Ökte, at the end of 1942, 8 factories, 7 arcades in central locations, 80 apartment buildings, 230 houses, 97 shops, and 190 plots of land were desperately looking for buyers through the newspapers! Naturally, prices plummeted instantly, resulting in entire fortunes being sold off for a piece of bread. Those who failed to settle the tax imposed on them by the Turkish authorities began seeing their names in the newspapers after January 7, 1943.
Their property was confiscated, and the “debtors” were led to forced labor in Aşkale, considered the Siberia of the East, to hasten their physical demise through weather conditions and forced labor that began at 5 in the morning and ended at 7 in the evening. In September 1943, the well-known American newspaper The New York Times published an article about Turkey’s stab in the back, and the Turkish National Assembly, without delay, decided on the immediate cancellation of taxes that had not yet been collected. Three months later (December 1943), it was decided to disband the labor battalions and return the “debtors” to their homes.
Those who endured the hardships and managed to return were literally unrecognizable. Of the 1,229 wealthy minority members who could not pay the exorbitant tax and ended up in the labor battalions, one in three never made it back.
Numerous testimonies record the harrowing details of yet another dark page in the history of modern Turkey. Law 4305 was permanently repealed on March 15, 1944, when the victorious Russian army reached the borders of Romania, and Turkey scrambled to erase the tracks of the atrocious crime it had committed.
Conclusion
The study and full knowledge of the historical events that marked and continue to mark the modern course of Greece and Turkey by no means constitute a sermon of hate toward the opposite side of the Aegean.
On the contrary, a hand of friendship permanently extended, with sincerity and mutual respect, gives hope to future generations to one day achieve what older generations could not. However, study and complete historical knowledge constitute a national duty, because the forgetting of evil is a license for its repetition. And Turkey in our days, with unrealistic neo-Ottoman fantasies, poses a major threat to stability, security, and peace throughout the Middle East and the Balkans.
As far as we are concerned, there is no more definitive, more powerful weapon for Greeks against our problematic neighbors than the full knowledge of our history!
*As soon as Germany’s defeat became certain, Turkey rushed to “declare war on Germany” (February 23, 1945).
Leonidas Koumakis
The knowledge of yesterday guides today and points the way for tomorrow. Those who understand the historical and contemporary course of events, define their own future.