THE JOINT AMERICAN MILITARY MISSION TO AID TURKEY: IMPLEMENTING THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE AND TRANSFORMING U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, 1947-1954

Thesis (Ph.D.), Department of History, Washington State UniversityThis dissertation examines the early history (1947-1954) of the Joint American Military Mission to Aid Turkey (JAMMAT) and its role in shaping U.S.-Turkish relations and as a window into the developing Cold War policies and strategies of the United States. This study begins by depicting the relevant and unique contexts for both Turkey and the United States leading up to the Truman Doctrine speech that brought the American mission to Turkey into existence. The remainder of the study uses the National Archive records of the mission itself, related Department of State documents, and memoirs to reveal both the substance of the aid mission and the vagaries of U.S. foreign policy that accompanied it. On the surface JAMMAT was a military modernization program for Turkey as part of the Containment Strategy. Underneath, this study depicts how the actions of JAMMAT also functioned to outfit and direct the Turkish military into a crucial and unknown role in top secret Anglo-American contingency war plans as a sacrificial speed bump in the event of full-scale war with the Soviet Union. Within this context, the work of JAMMAT did serve overt Turkish national security interests, but only secondarily to secret U.S. strategic designs. The great irony of JAMMAT's legacy is that the work of the mission, combined with the impact of the Korean War and the excellent performance of the Turkish Brigades in the UN police action to Korea, ended up increasing the value of Turkey as an American ally in the Cold War to such an extent that the United States pushed for the inclusion of Turkey into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Thus, intentionally and unintentionally, JAMMAT created the Turkish Model that was a blueprint for later U.S. aid programs and left a legacy affecting the security of Turkey, the Middle East, and the United States.Department of History, Washington State Universit