Ayhan Aktar is a Professor of Sociology at Istanbul Bilgi University. He is among the first social scientists to study discrimination, assimilation, and forced migration of minorities during the late Ottoman and early Republican periods in Turkey. His research on the 1942–43 Wealth Tax is based on fieldwork and analysis of British and U.S. diplomatic correspondence. He has published extensively on state–minority relations in modern Turkey. His research interests include Turkish nationalism, ethnic cleansing, discrimination, genocide, and the diplomacy surrounding the compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey.