Turkish tea culture

Two pots, one glass

Turkish tea is made in a çaydanlık, a pair of teapots stacked one on the other. Water boils in the big lower pot, and some of it goes into the small pot on top, where loose leaves steep into a strong brew. Pouring, the host tops each glass up with hot water from below, so everyone settles their own strength: koyu means dark, açık means light. The glass is ince belli, slim-waisted and tulip-shaped, which keeps the drink hot in the hand and shows off its crimson colour. Drinkers hold it by the rim. Sugar comes as small beet cubes. Milk and lemon are rare.

From coffee to tea

In the late 19th century Russians grew tea commercially at Batum, now Batumi in Georgia, using seedlings brought from China. Their success drew attention westward. In 1888 the Department of Agriculture tested the crop at Bursa, importing plants from Japan and China, but the land there did not suit it. Coffee had long been the Turkish hot drink, and after the First World War it grew costly and sometimes scarce, especially once Yemen, where it was grown, was lost to the empire. Tea was encouraged as the replacement. Trials in Rize Province began in 1912, pushed by Hulusi Bey of the Chamber of Agriculture.

The Black Sea crop

Botanist Ali Riza Erten was sent by the government in 1918 to test tea in several provinces, and his investigations pointed to Rize, Artvin and Ardahan. His notes then sat unused for about a decade. In 1924 a state nursery in Rize handed out some fifty thousand seedlings, and large-scale growing settled between 1939 and 1945. Rize Province became the country's tea heartland. Two Black Sea towns even took new names from the word çay, Kadahor becoming Çaykara and Mapavri becoming Çayeli. In 2019 Turkey grew 1.45 million tonnes of tea, about 4 per cent of the world crop, though by 2023 heat and irregular rain had cut that to just over 500,000 tonnes.

Where people drink

Tea is drunk at home, in shops and in the kıraathane, tea houses that have mostly been the territory of men. Tea gardens are the other great setting, and backgammon is the usual companion there; visitors to Sultan Ahmet and Taksim in Istanbul treat them as an attraction. Offering tea is one of the first things a household does for a guest. Turkey drinks more of it per person than any other country, around 3.16 kilograms a year each, close to four glasses a day. A younger generation has turned toward cafés in districts such as Karaköy, yet black tea remains the drink most people choose.

Herbal teas and shops

Beyond black tea, Turkey keeps a separate world of herbal infusions, sold in herb shops called aktar. These are used as folk medicine rather than as everyday drinking, and the sources note that most such remedies have not been confirmed by scientific study. Travellers tend to meet three of them: linden flower tea, rose hip tea and apple tea, which Turks call ıhlamur çayı, kuşburnu çayı and elma çayı. Yarrow tea has also been used medicinally, and modern research has looked into it, including a 2014 study by Demirel and colleagues.

How Turkish tea culture is kept

Making it starts with water in the lower pot of a çaydanlık. When it boils, some is poured over loose leaves in the smaller pot stacked above, and the tea steeps to a strong strength. The rest of the water stays hot. To serve, the host pours from the small pot and lets each person add hot water to taste, so a glass can be dark or light. Glasses are small, tulip-shaped and held by the rim. Sugar cubes are offered on the side. Biscuits, sweet or savoury, often come out with tea in the afternoon. Guests are offered a glass as a matter of course.

When and where

There is no season for it. Tea is drunk through the day, every day. The one loose timing is the afternoon, when biscuits are often brought out alongside the tea, in a window running from three o'clock to five. Tea drinking itself is not confined to those hours: homes, shops and tea houses pour it from morning until night.

The drink belongs to Turkey and to Turkish communities abroad. Its heartland is the Black Sea coast, above all Rize Province, where the leaf is grown. Tea houses and tea gardens fill the towns and cities, and Istanbul is where the traditional glasses are made. Northern Cyprus and parts of the Balkan Peninsula share the habit.

What Turkish tea culture means

A glass of tea is how Turkey says welcome. Offering one to a visitor, a customer or a neighbour costs little and marks the person as attended to. Because strength is chosen glass by glass, the ritual also leaves room for individual preference inside a shared round. The tea house and the tea garden give the same drink a public face, somewhere to sit, talk and play backgammon. For the Black Sea provinces, tea is at once a daily habit and a livelihood that reshaped local towns.

Questions people ask about Turkish tea culture

See also

Armudu tea glassA pear-shaped glass used in Azerbaijan to serve and drink black tea.Caffè sospesoAn anonymous gift of a paid cup of coffee for a stranger in needSamovarA heated urn that brews tea for a slow, sociable pour, from Russia to Iran and KashmirArabic coffeeA bitter, spiced brew served as a gesture of hospitality across the Arab world.

Good reading and sources

• Anger in Turkey grows over government’s handling of wildfiresThe Guardian, Article
• Anger in Turkey grows over government’s handling of wildfiresThe Guardian, Article

• Tea in Turkey on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.