ABSTRACT
World War I and its aftermath represented an ebb in Turkish-American relations, which began to improve only after the establishment of formal relations in 1927. The Americans were soon to discover that there was a striking transformation from the Ottoman Empire that Ambassador Abram Isaac Elkus had to leave in 1917, and the young Turkish Republic to which Ambassador Joseph Grew arrived a decade later. A series of major social, economic, and political reforms not only changed the face of Turkey during the 1920s and 1930s, but also positively influenced bilateral ties resulting in a rapprochement.
