Intelligence as Covert Statecraft: The OSS, CIA’s Predecessor, in Neutral Turkey, 1939-1945

AbstractDuring World War II, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) ran clandestine operations in neutral Turkey that became a lever of Allied diplomacy. The aim of this article is to explain how these covert activities shaped Ankara’s wartime neutrality and postwar alignment by integrating close archival analysis with international relations theory. The study is important because intelligence is often treated as background noise in accounts of neutrality and alliance formation; placing it at the center clarifies how states recalibrate choices under uncertainty and threat. Methodologically, the article conducts a qualitative case study using U.S. wartime archives such as; OSS field reports, cables, and diplomatic correspondence and interprets the evidence through realist balance-of-threat and institutionalist lenses, tracing mechanisms, collection, influence, and quid-pro-quo bargaining, that link operations to policy outcomes. The analysis finds that OSS networks in İstanbul generated timely reporting on Axis movements and eroded German influence, reinforcing Allied leverage to distance Turkey from the Axis. At the same time, President İsmet İnönü and his advisers practiced “intelligence diplomacy,” selectively cooperating with Allied espionage to extract aid and security assurances while maintaining formal neutrality. Outcomes include Turkey’s late-war rupture with Germany and a smoother path into the postwar U.S. led free world. The article contributes to the literature by utilizing the intelligence as a tool of statecraft that works in tandem with diplomacy, sharpening explanations of neutrality under threat, and offering an empirically grounded concept, “intelligence diplomacy”, that travels to other cases of small-state hedging.