Tea in Turkey
[6] Tea was first carried by Silk Road traders to present-day Turkey during the 5th century, who used it in barter trade for Chinese produce.
[7][citation needed] In the later part of the 19th century, the nearby city of Batum, in what was then known as the Caucasus Viceroyalty (now known as Batumi in Georgia), was cultivating tea with great success.
[7][citation needed] This commercial growing region in Georgia had been started by the Russians importing tea seedlings from China.
[7] [citation needed] Under the direction of the state and leaders, the Department of Agriculture selected the city of Bursa in order to evaluate the feasibility of tea cultivation by importing seedlings from Japan and China in 1888.
[9] Early tea cultivation experiments started in Rize Province in 1912, as an initiative by the Head of the Chamber of Agriculture, Hulusi Bey.
[7] He took detailed notes on the ecological factors that made for successful tea crops in Batumi and tried to find similar features in Turkey in his paper titled, Şimali Şarki Anadolu ve Kafkasyada Tetkikatı Ziraiye (Agricultural Investigations in North Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus).
[7] By 1924, the government established the Central Tea Nursery (Turkish: Merkez Çay Fidanlığı) to distribute approximately 50,000 seedlings in the province of Rize.
[7] Many of the early tea farmers of this region stopped producing the crop as a result of lack of knowledge and initial profit.
[14] In order to boost this new sector and improve the living conditions of this province with traditionally below par circumstances, the government strongly supported this industry.
[14] Ironically, Adnan Menderes and his Democrat Party - which stressed the importance of a free-market economy - used protectionism to help shore up the tea sector.
[14] As the tea sector became more prosperous, so did the North Anatolian province with the construction of highways, schools, hospitals and important infrastructure.
[14][clarification needed] The decline in prices and a growing resentment towards the government led to many growers forgoing the quality controls placed by the Tea Corporation.
Within the months of January and August, Turkey made a profit of approximately 770,000 U.S. dollars from exporting tea to Germany.
[17] Traditionally from the Caucasus, such as Georgia and Azerbaijan, the 40,000 workers who were anticipating harvesting tea were not let in the country due to the pandemic.
[19] As part of the response to the fires, the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his party threw teabags from a moving vehicle in one of the affected provinces.
[20] They are usually held by the rim in order to save the drinker's fingertips from being scorched, as the tea is served boiling hot.
[20] Sweet or savory biscuits called kurabiye are usually served with tea during teatime (usually between three and five in the afternoon), though tea-drinking is not limited to these hours.
[20] Tea is an important part of Turkish culture, and is the most commonly consumed hot drink, despite the country's long history of coffee consumption.
[21] With the growing young population, Turkey is seeing a shift towards café culture in places like Karaköy where coffee is predominantly being drunk.
[21] However, this increase in the consumption of coffee does not negate the fact that black Turkish tea is still the drink of choice for Turks.
[25] Sideritis (also known as Ironwort, or Mountain tea; Turkish: Dağ Çayı) is used medicinally and grows at high elevations.
