Taxation per head of the population is some LT 20 (about £2.5.0), which is relatively low compared with that of Great Britain (.£15.14.0 per head), France (f 5.10.0), Germany (£5.0.0), Greece (f4.0.0) or Bulgaria (12.0.0), but it is high for a country so little organized as Turkey. The direct taxes are income tax, land tax and road tax. The agricultural tithe of 121% was abolished in 1925. In 1927 an aviation tax for the provision of funds for the formation of an air force was levied at the rate of 10 added to all tax payments. Income tax is levied at the rate of 6% on all incomes up to LT 3,000, rising by a sliding scale to 14% on incomes above LT 5o.000. Certain exemptions are granted to farmers, writers, teachers and other professional classes.
In 1926 a consumption tax at 21% was levied on all pur chases in shops, restaurants and hotels, and it is still in force. It was payable by stamps affixed to all receipts for purchases.
The writers who have left the most complete and trustworthy contemporary accounts of the Turkish army in the 14th and 5th centuries, when it reached the height of its most character istic development, are Bertrandon de la Brocquiere, equerry to Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, and Francesco Filelfo (q.v.) of Tolentino. Both ascribe the military superiority of the Turks over the nations of western Europe to two facts—firstly to their possession of a well-organized standing army, an institu tion unknown elsewhere, and secondly to their far stricter disci pline.
The regular troops comprised the Janissaries (q.v.), a corps of infantry recruited from captured sons of Christians, and trained to form a privileged caste of scientific soldiers and religious fanatics; and the Spahis, a body of cavalry similarly recruited, and armed with scimitar, mace and bow. Celibacy was one of the rules of this standing army, which, in its semi-monastic ideals and constitution, resembled the knightly orders of the West in their prime. The Janissaries numbered about 12,000, the Spahis about 8,000. A second army of some 40,00o men, mostly mounted and armed like the Spahis, was feudal in character, and consisted chiefly of the personal followers of the Moslem nobility; more than half its numbers were recruited in Europe. This force of 6o,000 trained soldiers was accompanied by a horde of irregulars, levied chiefly among the barbarous mountaineers of the Balkans and Asia Minor. Many Christian soldiers of fortune enlisted with the Turks as artillerists or engineers, and supplied them at Constantinople with the most powerful cannon of the age. Other Christians were com
pelled to serve as engineers or in the ranks. As late as 1683 a corps of Walachians was forced to join the Turkish army before Vienna, and entrusted with the task of bridging the Danube. But in the 18th and early 19th centuries the introduction of Chris tians tended to weaken the moral of the army already sapped by defeat ; it was found impossible to maintain the discipline of the Janissaries, whose privileges had become a source of danger; and the feudal nobility became more and more independent of the sultan's authority. These three causes contributed to make reorganization inevitable.
The destruction of the janissaries in 1826 marked the close of the history of the old Turkish army; already the re-creation of the service on the accepted models of western Europe had been com menced. This was still incomplete when the new force was called upon to meet the Russians in 1828, and though the army displayed its accustomed bravery, its defective organization and other causes led to its defeat. Since then the army has been almost as con stantly on active service as the British; the Crimean 'War, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 and the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 witnessed the employment of a large proportion of the sultan's available forces, while innumerable local revolts in different parts of the empire called for great exer tions, and often for fierce fighting on the part of the troops locally in garrison and those sent up from the nearest provinces. Finally, the Turkish army made its greatest effort in the World War (q.v.), where, despite administrative inefficiency and corruption on the one hand, and the defective equipment and handling of the fighting troops on the other, it earned the admiration of its opponents by its stubborn endurance and resistance. German leadership played a considerable part in its early success at the Dardanelles (q.v.), and to a less degree in other theatres, but friction between the German and Turkish officers became an in creasing handicap. The results were aggravated because the Turkish army threw up only a few leaders, of whom Mustafa Kemal (q.v.) was the most notable. But round him gathered a nucleus of better trained younger officers, and after the disasters which marked for Turkey the close of the World War, it was the influence of this new school which brought about the rapid re covery of the Turkish army, shown in the expulsion of the Greek forces from Asia Minor.