ISTANBUL — First, the United States and Turkey temporarily stopped issuing visas to each other’s citizens. Then the Turkish lira plunged on international markets, and most travel between the two countries was curtailed.

By midday Monday, fears rose that a minor diplomatic dispute threatened to flare up into a full diplomatic standoff.

But by evening, both sides seemed to be taking steps to ease tensions.

“This decision is very sad before anything else,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey told journalists at a news briefing during a visit to Kiev, Ukraine, sounding a rare conciliatory note. “It is regrettable that the U.S. ambassador in Ankara took such a decision.”

In a statement a few hours later, the American ambassador, John R. Bass, said: “This was not a decision we took lightly. It’s a decision we took with great sadness.”