The Ritual of Turkish Coffee - Only In Türkiye⎮Go Türkiye

We are in Tamiz Street. This is the street that is the beginning of coffee culture for the world. This is the story of Turkish coffee. In Turkey, a cup of Turkish coffee is worth 40 years of friendship because it is the absolute... It's a symbol of hospitality. Since 1555, Turkish people have been drinking Turkish coffee, and it is a ritual that is a part of every day today. Turkish coffee is on the intangible cultural heritage list for humanity since 2013 and it was the first beverage to ever be added to the list. We will be learning about all of its history today and how it has affected the world. Let the coffee begin. Today, we are here to learn about Turkish coffee, about its secrets and about its history. With me is Osman Serim. He is one of the members of the Turkish Coffee Association, and he's going to give us some really insider information about all of the things you've been wondering about Turkish Turkish coffee. We have a lot of questions about Turkish coffee. The first and I guess most important is how did coffee get to Turkey? Actually, it comes from the Rift Valley and Rift Valley, as you know, is the place where humanity started. So humanity and coffee are from the same geography. Well, I think you have to have a cup of coffee to be a human anyway. I do anyway. And starting in the 11th century, traders started to pass the coffee across the the strait to Yemen and starting 11th century you, you know, start to find coffee drinkers in Yemen and then it spread to all of the Arabic peninsula. In 1548 the Turks, Özdemir Pasha, who was a Turkish general, conquers Yemen. And immediately at that time when you conquer a country, you take whatever is valuable and you take it back to the palace in Istanbul and you present it to the sultan. And the sultan at that time was Suleiman the Magnificent, Kanuni Sultan Süleyman as we say it in Turkish. So probably he is the first Sultan to drink coffee. Coffee. In the Ottoman Empire, especially in Istanbul, we have, you know, we've been enjoying coffee for 500 years now, more than 500 years, so we have lots of cultural things related to coffee drinking, for example, in Turkish, if you say breakfast, you're talking about kahvaltı. Kahvealtı, you have your breakfast and then you have coffee. They call breakfast what you eat before your coffee. Kahvealtı. And also a name which is one of the most common colors is kahverengi. Like in English it's brown, in French it's marron, in Turkish it's coffee. Kahve. I want to ask you about this... It's almost like a well next to us. It's a well, but before, actually, this was closed. And you will see when you go downstairs, actually, this is an oven. And they used to roast coffee. It was a big furnace, a big oven, where they used to roast coffee. So when you go downstairs and you will see it, it is actually an oven. So, this is actually the oldest coffee roasting oven that we know of today. In the world right now, every day, more or less three billion cups of coffee is enjoyed. Three billion. And out of which, one out of two hundred... coffees drank every day is done with a Turkish way of making it. It's called the Cezve making it. Not only the Turks but the old Ottoman Empire territory which includes the Balkans including Greece, the Caucasian countries, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, etc. and the Middle East. Cyprus, etc., the Eastern Mediterranean, they enjoy their coffee done with the Turkish way called cezve. So about 200 million people live in this geography and one out of 200 cups of coffee in the world is made with this methodology, Turkish coffee. When you talk about Turkish coffee, you must also mention the fortune telling side of it. I was going to say that. Fortune telling is very, very typical of Turkish coffee. Still very strong today and also technology has taken over and you have some websites and all kinds of things on fortune telling. So very, very popular, still very popular. They say that the beginning of fortune telling was in the harems. Why harems? Because harems, especially the sultan's harems, were extremely dangerous places. There were lots of jealousy, of course, and people who used to love each other or hate each other, et cetera, all kinds of love and hate relationships. So people used to pretend. Reading the fortune, but used to tell things they wanted to say. Especially when they want to talk about Sultan's mother, who was number one person in the harem, extremely important person, or officially wed wives, four of them, they used to use fortune telling methods to tell really what they thought about. Yes, thank you so much, Osman. It has been such a pleasure meeting you.