I first met the journalist and author Ece Temelkuran in Istanbul's Cihangir — a district filled with coffee shops, trendy bars, and boutiques. It is a far cry from the devastated city we have seen on TV screens in recent weeks. Over beers, she talked to me about her country's psyche almost as if the place were a person — a person conflicted in their politics, consumed by their religion, and grappling with deteriorating mental health.Ece's new book, Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy, is a look at the country's history. It uses relics such as photos of politicians and nationalistic slogans as launching pads to ask, "What does it mean to be Turkish anyway?" In doing so, the book tells a story that runs from the start of the Ottoman Empire to the Gezi Park protests of 2013, where people staged a mass sit-in to demonstrate (mostly) against Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan 's authoritarian brand of leadership.Since the events of Gezi — during which more than 8,000 injuries were recorded — things have hardly calmed down in Turkey. In the last year alone , there have been more than a dozen bombings in the country, which many view as the gateway from the Middle East to Europe. Some of these attacks are thought to have been engineered by the Islamic State terror network, in retaliation against Turkey's alignment with allied forces fighting ISIS in Syria. Others have been attributed to the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has long been angered by Turkey's denial of rights to Kurdish citizens.Then, less than a month ago, a military coup took place in Istanbul . Armed forces sieged broadcast buildings and took hostages. Erdoğan, still president, managed to quash the uprising, with the number of people killed during the struggle reported to be around 300. The subsequent fallout has been intense; Turks thought to be associated with the suspected coup organizer, a Muslim cleric called Fethullah Gülen, reportedly have been incarcerated, lost their jobs, or disappeared. Amnesty International has reported human rights breaches spanning from torture to execution, which the government has denied.