The Turkish Political Crisis of 1977—1980 in American Intelligence Assessments

The article is devoted to the analysis of expert assessments of the Turkish political crisis of 1977—1980 by the American Intelligence services. The study briefly examines the factors that influenced the development of the American policy towards Turkey during the J. Carter administration. The Authors, based on the documents of the Electronic Reading Room of the Central Intelligence Agency, trace the dynamics of changes in topics, approaches, and tasks that were set for Intelligence by the American political leadership of the United States and were relevant in the context of the development of American-Turkish relations. The Research demonstrates the primary dominance of issues on the foreign policy agenda and the secondary importance of issues of the internal political process in Turkey for Washington. The Article examines a transition between a weak interest in studying domestic political problems in Turkey in 1977 — early 1978; drawing attention in connection with the imposition of martial law and the events in Iran (the Islamic Revolution of 1978—1979) to the problems of the Turkish crisis in December 1978 — November 1979; another decline — opposed to foreign policy topics — in attention to Turkish domestic problems on the background of the Iranian (November 1979) and Afghan (December 1979) crises. The Authors note that American intelligence has repeatedly mentioned the possibility, and since the summer of 1980 predicted a military coup in Turkey without specifying exact dates, but reassured the White House that it would be carried out by the military or nationalists supporters of a pro-Western course. The study concludes that, while secondary, domestic political issues in Turkey were also ranked by importance and changed priority depending on the international situation for the Carter administration.