During the 1950s, policymakers in the United States decided they wanted Turkish soldiers to fight and die for American interests—and, for a price, Turkish leaders were willing to provide these soldiers. The United States’ desire for Turkish military cooperation enabled leaders in Turkey to pursue otherwise unsustainable economic policies. This paper draws on British, Turkish, and American archival sources to show how Turkey’s diplomats played their American and European allies against one another to secure more economic assistance and sustain their rapid industrialization drive. Though all the governments involved had a shared interest in containing communism, Turkey’s leaders perceived that the American desire for a strong, stable Turkey was far greater than that of its European allies. When European governments pressed Turkey to repay its growing debts, Turkish leaders could rely on their American counterparts to call for more moderate demands. The sense that the United States would not call Turkey to account led various European countries to cut bilateral deals with the Turkish government in an attempt to prioritize their debts over those of their neighbors. All of this activity bought Turkey’s leaders extra time to build factories, power plants, and roads (and to win elections). By providing an account of the negotiations surrounding Turkish debt in the mid-1950s, this paper illustrates how countries like Turkey exercised a degree of agency within the confines of the American-led Cold War order. In doing so, it argues that the Cold War must be understood not only in terms of how American and Soviet systems were imposed or applied around the world, but also in terms of how people around the world actively navigated those systems.