Atatürk receives US Ambassador Grew at Gazi Forest Farm in 1930

In November 1930, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and first president of the Turkish Republic, received the American ambassador, Joseph Grew, at the Gazi Orman Çiftliği, the state-run Gazi Forest Farm on the outskirts of Ankara. Atatürk had built the model farm himself and often used it for official guests.

The meeting was recorded on film. The footage included an address by Atatürk to the American people, a rare moving-image record of him speaking directly to a foreign audience. Such recordings of his voice and manner were uncommon at the time, which later gave the material particular historical value.

The encounter mattered because Turkish–American relations were still young. Diplomatic ties had been restored only in the late 1920s, after the break caused by the First World War and the years of the Turkish War of Independence. Grew, who served as ambassador in Ankara from 1927 to 1932, worked to build trust between the two governments. The filmed meeting reflected Atatürk's interest in presenting the new republic to the wider world, and the footage has since been revisited by researchers and archivists.