[EXPAT VOICE] Turkish tea: tradition and hospitality

In Turkey, drinking tea occurs three times a day: breakfast, afternoon tea and after dinner. Of course there are other times when the tulip-shaped glasses are brought out, such as when guests come for a visit or customers appear to be inclined to spend some extra time visiting a shop. Sometimes when I am visiting a relative’s house I will drink tea just to respect the “ev sahibi” (homeowner).

One glass never seems to be enough and most Turks will drink again and again. I think this is because the tulip-shaped glass is small. If guest come to our house, it goes without say that we serve tea to them. If we see that their glass is empty we assume they want more, or we can see from how they place the teaspoon in relation to the cup that they don’t want anymore. If the teaspoon is inside the glass it means that the guest still wants to drink tea, but if the spoon is placed flat on top of the glass it means that the guest doesn’t want to drink tea anymore.

At our shop, my husband, as a shop owner, will offer tea to visitors after they finish shopping or if a loyal customer comes to our shop, even they are not buying anything, my husband will always offer tea. “Please come here again, even if only to drink tea.” That’s a sentence you can hear from a shop owner as a visitor leaves the shop.

Summer is a time when tourism booms in Alanya. The city is filled with tourists, both domestic and from abroad, particularly Europe. With all their hospitability, shop owners will offer tea to tourists, and most are quite happy to accept this gesture. One funny experience for me was tourists that came to our shop and when we offered tea to them they said that their stomachs were already full with tea because every shop that they visited that day had already offered them a glass of tea and they drank so much tea that they couldn’t have another drop.

Actually in Turkey there are many kinds of tea such as çay (normal black tea), ada çayı (island tea), kuşburnu çayı (rosehip tea) and elma çayı (apple tea). My personal favorites are ada çayı and kuşburnu çayı. My father-in-law said kuşburnu çayı is a favorite of former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Çiller. He also explained that kuşburnu çayı is a kind of medicine. I went online to read up on it and saw that kuşburnu çayı is can be a treatment for several illnesses, such as colds, ulcers, high blood pressure and many more.

There are two options for drinking çay: dark tea (demli çay) and light tea (açık çay). When someone offers you çay, you can say “demli olsun,” for dark tea or “açık olsun,” for light tea.

In the late morning or afternoon, sometimes my mother-in-law calls the neighbor to come to her house, just to drink some tea together. Or similarly, my mother-in-law will go to our neighbor’s house because they’ve invited her over for tea. “Gel bize, çay demledik.” That’s the sentence I always hear when neighbors shout to my mother-in-law from their balcony or window. Since my mother-in-law knows that I don’t like drinking tea, the poor lady never asks me to drink tea with her. But if she’s making kısır (cold bulgur salad) and she calls her nieces and neighbors to visit then she will call me to join the gathering because she figures there’s more than çay I can enjoy.

A unique place in Turkey for drinking tea is called a çay bahçesi. I always thought a çay bahçesi was tea plantation field but I was wrong, because a çay bahçesi is the place where families can enjoy drinking tea together. It can be a cafe with the garden outside or it is just a cafe with an open atmosphere.

Sometimes on Sunday afternoons my husband takes me to the çay bahçesi near the Alanya harbor. Even if I only enjoy a single serving of tea, I relax in the atmosphere of the wind blowing from the sea while I enjoy viewing the coast of Mediterranean Sea.

I wonder why Turkish people don’t get bored by drinking tea every day. Very rarely do I find a Turk to be like me in that they don’t really care for drinking tea. It’s strange to me that Turkish people like to drink tea so much but they don’t have it with their main meals. In my country (Indonesia), drinking tea is the same as drinking water. So we drink tea while we eat our main meals.