War Tax Law (Tekalif-i Harbiye): An Instrument of Dispossession and Capital Accumulation in the Ottoman Empire during the Great War

Abstract

As a total war, World War I constituted a significant historical moment which proved that warfare not only serves to build nations and national identities, but can also create suitable socioeconomic and political conditions that foster the process of capital accumulation. The Ottoman state, like all the belligerents, on the one hand mobilized human power, means of production and subsistence and natural resources on a large scale for fighting and financing the war; on the other hand, it established a war economy based on violence and protectionism that directly favored war profiteers. The present article centers on the implementation of the War Tax Law, adopted on the eve of the war, which paved the way for state policies of dispossession, confiscation, and requisition. It argues that these practices aimed at the redistribution of capital to give birth to a new generation of Turkish-Muslim capitalists.