^{#smrgKİTABEVİ} The Unknown Turks: Mustafa Kemal Paşa, Nationalist Ankara and Daily Life in Anatolia, January - March 1921 -

This book is based on the notes and photos of U.S. journalist Clarence K. Streit, who visited Ankara in 1920 and 1921, and includes never before published photos of Anatolia. Streit was known as the founder of an international movement aimed at forming a confederation to prevent war. During his two months of travel to Anatolia, Streit took nearly 200 photos, 120 of which are included in the book. Streit was able to speak with many memorable people during his visits, and was the first journalist to interview Atatürk after he became the president of the assembly, Streit returned to Paris after his Anatolian travels and designed a draft plan for the book, which he called Unknown Turks (Bilinmyen Türkler) The book was refused by publishing houses in the U.S. and England because Streit praised Atatürk for his success and claimed that the first Turkish Republic in history would be founded. Heath Lowry, met Streit in 1983 in Washington through one of his students, Uğur Doğan. Streit gave him a copy of his book because he wanted to see it printed in both Turkish and English. But 25 years passed before Lowry could begin working on it After documents and photos of Streit were published in 2007, Lowry began work on the book. Streit died in 1986. His photographss are the basis of the book along with the original handwritten draft.

In 1983, while living in Washington, D.C., I received a telephone call from a former student named Uğur Doğan, who was then serving as a young diplomat at the Turkish Embassy. He told me that he had recently met a most interesting man, who not only had traveled to Ankara and interviewed Mustafa Kemal Paşa [Atatürk] in 1921, but had also written an unpublished manuscript about the seven weeks he spent in Anatolia during the winter of that year. This was Clarence K. Streit, who was one of the very first foreign journalists to visit Ankara at the height of the Turkish War of Independence, and the first foreign correspondent to personally interview Mustafa Kemal Paşa after he was elected President of the Grand National Assembly. Streit's connection to Turkey did not end with his 1921 visit. At the end of the following year he covered the Lausanne Treaty negotiations in Switzerland, after which he returned to İstnabul as the Public Ledger's correspondent for the Near East and the Balkans, a position he held for the next two years.