Turkey drinks more tea per capita than any other country in the world — roughly 3.5 kilograms per person a year — and almost all of it, around 99%, is grown domestically. Çay isn’t treated as a beverage choice so much as a social default: offered to guests, customers, and strangers alike, served constantly from morning to night in small tulip-shaped glasses that have become a genuine symbol of the country.

Why Turkey Grows Almost All Its Own Tea

Coffee, not tea, was the Ottoman Empire’s drink of choice for centuries. Tea only became Turkey’s national drink in the 20th century, after World War I disrupted coffee imports and the government began encouraging domestic tea cultivation along the Black Sea coast. Early attempts at tea farming in the late 1800s failed, but growers found success in Rize province starting in 1917, using seeds brought from Georgia. By 1924 the government had established a central tea nursery to distribute seedlings, and by 1965 domestic production finally met local demand. Çay-Kur, the state tea authority founded in 1971, coordinated cultivation and processing until private companies entered the market in 1984. Today Rize remains the heart of Turkish tea production, and a roughly 145% tariff on imported tea keeps the domestic industry dominant.

The Tulip Glass: More Than a Design Choice

Turkish tea is served in a small, thin-waisted glass known as ince belli bardak (literally “thin-waisted glass”), holding around 100 milliliters. The shape is functional, not just decorative: the narrow waist keeps the tea near the base hot while the flared rim cools enough to sip comfortably, and the clear glass shows off the tea’s deep red color, which Turks treat as a genuine quality signal — a properly brewed çay should look almost mahogany, not pale.

How Turkish Tea Is Actually Made

Turkish tea is brewed using a double-teapot method called çaydanlık: a smaller pot sits stacked on top of a larger one. The bottom pot holds boiling water, while the top pot steeps loose black tea leaves in a small amount of that water until it becomes strongly concentrated. To serve, a small amount of the strong concentrate is poured into a glass, then diluted with hot water from the bottom pot to the drinker’s preferred strength — demli (strong/dark) or açık (light) — rather than everyone drinking the same fixed brew. Sugar is offered as cubes or crystals on the side, stirred in to taste; milk is essentially never added.

Tea as a Social Default, Not Just a Drink

Offering tea is one of the most basic units of Turkish hospitality. Shopkeepers routinely offer a glass to browsing customers regardless of whether a purchase happens, and it’s genuinely common for tea to arrive unbidden mid-conversation, sent over from a nearby tea house via a running neighborhood delivery system. Refusing outright can come across as slightly impolite; declining a second or third glass is normal, but turning down the first is often read as declining the hospitality itself, not just the beverage.

Where TAKK Travel Fits In

As a TÜRSAB-licensed Turkey DMC, TAKK Travel builds cultural context like this into Istanbul itineraries, and a Guided Istanbul Food Tour typically works genuine tea culture into a wider street-food program rather than treating it as an afterthought between stops.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is most Turkish tea grown?
Almost all Turkish tea, around 99% of domestic consumption, is grown in Rize province on the Black Sea coast, where large-scale cultivation began in 1917.

Why is Turkish tea served in small tulip-shaped glasses?
The thin-waisted glass shape keeps tea hot at the base while the flared rim cools for sipping, and the clear glass shows off the tea’s deep red color, which is treated as a sign of proper brewing.

How is Turkish tea brewed?
Using a double-teapot method called çaydanlık: loose tea steeps in a small pot stacked on top of a larger pot of boiling water, then the strong concentrate is diluted with hot water to taste when served.

Is it rude to refuse tea in Turkey?
Refusing a first offer can come across as slightly impolite, since offering tea is a core part of Turkish hospitality. Declining additional glasses after the first is completely normal.

Was coffee or tea Turkey’s original national drink?
Coffee was the Ottoman Empire’s drink of choice for centuries. Tea only became dominant in the 20th century after World War I disrupted coffee imports and the government promoted domestic tea farming.

Do Turks add milk to their tea?
No. Turkish tea is drunk black, sweetened with sugar cubes or crystals to taste, without milk — closer to Russian and Persian glass-tea traditions than British-style tea.