Watching Another Attempted Coup in Turkey with My Mother

Being Turkish means worrying about your country all the time. We are unable to stop fretting about our motherland, as though she were an eccentric relative one could neither fully trust on her own nor stop loving. As a nation, we are used to anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and melancholy. And blind rage: there is plenty of that, too. I once heard a friend declare that the scientific community should look into “the extraordinary Turkish immune system” to research how we have developed resistance to scandals and traumas that would have sent other societies reeling. While I don’t quite like the nationalistic boasting in his assessment, I know what he means. Collectively, we have been overloaded with too much stress for too long.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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