Mrs. Salkim's Diamonds

The film is set during the period of the Varlik Vergisi where many non-Muslims were forced to pay higher taxes, often in an arbitrary and unrealistic way. Around two thousand non-Muslims, who could not pay the amount demanded for the tax within the time-limit of thirty days, were arrested and sent to a forced labor camp in Askale in the Erzurum Province of eastern Turkey. Twenty-one of these laborers died there.