One month after the Korean War broke out, Turkey announced its decision to send a brigade to join the United Nations Command in Korea. Turkey was the fourth largest troop contributor after the US, UK and Canada. Among the UN prisoners captured by North Korean and the Chinese People’s Volunteers, the Turks were the third largest POW contingent after the Americans and the British. It was estimated that about 38 percent of American prisoners and 15 percent of British did not survive captivity. As many as a third of the American prisoners were accused of having collaborated in some form with the Communists. Twenty-one American prisoners refused repatriation and elected to remain with the enemy. In comparison, all Turkish prisoners survived their captivity. Not a single one appeared to have collaborated with the enemy. Why did Turks had better records? Why did Turkish POWs appear to be immune to Communist indoctrination? Existing literature about Korean War POWs has until now focused primarily on the treatment and behavior of American and British prisoners in Communist camps. Yet Turkish prisoners’ conduct has long been neglected by English-language accounts. Drawing on a diversified body of published and unpublished documentary materials from Turkish, Chinese and English sources, this paper argues that the main reasons why Turkish prisoners successfully resisted Chinese “lenient policy” and “re-education programs” are their strict system of military discipline as Atatürk’s soldiers and strong religious belief. This paper examined the declassified documents from the National Archives in the US, the Great Britain, China and Turkey, and especially the most recently unlocked Korean catalogue at the Military History and Strategic Studies Archives (ATASE) in Ankara. This paper has also drawn upon published and unpublished autobiographical materials by Turkish veterans and former Communist camp translators. Furthermore, it gathered personal diaries and letters that were sent from the front line and the prisoner camps by Turks to their families some of which were published by Turkish press. It also used illustrative material from oral history interviews the author conducted with Turkish veterans and ex-prisoners. This research will contribute both to the histories of the Cold War by examining how the political realities of the Turkish POW’s experiences fitted into the Cold War propaganda which was being ladled out by the Chinese, and Turkish studies by analysing the Turkish military archives on religious training and propaganda which have never been before examined.