Abstract
The political and military problems of the Ottoman Empire in the last quarter of the 19th century revealed a financial bottleneck. In order to overcome this problem, the government first went to domestic borrowing and could not provide the money needed, and in the Crimean War of 1853-1856, foreign debt was borrowed from Britain for the first time. The addition of new foreign debts to the foreign debts over time caused the bankruptcy of the Ottoman economy, and the creditor states established the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA) and seized various tax revenues of the Ottoman Empire in order to provide their debts. The revenues of the tobacco tax included in these taxes were left to the institution called the Regie Administration and the Regie was charged with collecting all tobacco taxes in the form of a monopoly (yed-i vâhid) within the country. But over time, the problems between the Regie and the tobacco producer led to an increase in tobacco smuggling. To prevent smuggling, clashes took place between the armed forces of the Regie and the smugglers. In our study, these conflicts, the organizational chart and fields of activity of the Kordon unions established to support the Regie rangers will be discussed.