In the aftermath of the 12 September 1980 coup in Turkey, the left was decimated, military rulers subjected the country’s economy to IMF-style reforms, and Kurdish activists were ruthlessly pursued. This story is relatively well known. However, what is discussed far less is that the coup radically altered the archival landscape of Turkey in two, diametrically opposed, ways. First, the military junta initiated the reorganization and redaction of the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul and founded a new state archive for material from the Turkish Republican era in Ankara. Second, 1980 was a moment when people, particularly leftist political activists, destroyed not only their personal archives, but also the archives of the political and community organizations they were part of in an attempt to avoid persecution by the military regime for their activities. In contrast to the July 15 coup attempt of 2016, relatively little scholarly literature exists on the 1980 coup and its aftermath in either English or Turkish. This paper argues that one reason for this divergence is the central role archival destruction played in the events of the coup and its aftermath. Arguably, there has been too little reflection on the way both events- the creation of state archives, on the one hand, and the destruction of personal and community archives, on the other hand- have shaped the landscape of contemporary Ottoman and Turkish historiography. This “twin” legacy of the coup thus presents a methodological challenge. How does one write a history for an event that itself changed the nature of archives and resulted in the loss of personal, cultural, and political texts? Based on oral history interviews conducted in Germany, Turkey, and the United States, this paper explores how archive destruction can be understood as a form of personal preservation and political strategy. In so doing, it interrogates the ethical responsibilities, methodological challenges, and political stakes of (re-) creating through historical research the contours of destroyed archives.