Resilient Turkish Tea Culture Offers Comfort

Ad Hoc Groups Across Turkey Distribute Food and Tea to Quake Victims as Death Toll Rises

By Dan Bolton

Ad hoc groups across Turkey are distributing food and hot tea, helping the homeless locate places to stay, and comforting residents of the more than 264,000 apartments destroyed following devastating twin earthquakes.?

Tea is pouring in from around the world.

Turkey, one of the top five tea-producing regions, consumes about 95% of the tea grown there. Caykur, Turkey’s largest tea supplier, dispatched vehicles equipped to brew large quantities of tea for homeless residents in Hatay, one of the regions hardest hit by temblors that killed almost 45,000 people on Feb. 6, many in residential highrises as they slept.

Traditional Turkish tea culture is centered around “keyif,” meaning enjoyment or pleasure. Tea is consumed in social settings, often out of the home. Keyif today is a source of comfort in a time of grief.?

According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey, more than 200,000 cafes, restaurants, and bars are registered. Thousands of tea shops and street-level neighborhood cafes are located in quake-devastated downtown areas.

Kahramanmaras, located near the initial quake's epicenter, reports that more than 200 structures eight stories and higher collapsed. Damage is extensive in Antakya (ancient Antioch, a city of 250,000 founded by Alexander the Great), Sanliurfa (ancient Edessa), home to the world’s oldest known megalithic settlements at Gofekli Tepe, a UN World Heritage Site, and Aleppo, Syria, a city continuously occupied since 4000 BC.?

In December, UNESCO inscribed Turkish tea culture on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as a symbol of identity, hospitality, and social interaction.?

Sri Lanka sent a consignment of tea, and King Charles was visibly emotional as he met with volunteers and the Turkish Ambassador over tea at a Trafalgar Square pop-up.?

A 12-year-old boy erected a tea stand in Bosnia to raise money for quake survivors. “I had the idea to set up a tea stand when I saw the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria on television," said Eighth-grader Benjamin Mehanovic in Sarajevo. He donated contributions to Pomozi.ba an online fund that has collected 236,410 KM (about $150,000 US dollars) for relief efforts in Turkey.

Tea factories and workers in the northern tea-growing regions of Turkey were spared, but the toll from property damage in South Turkey is high. The twin quakes are among the world’s five deadliest temblors of the past 20 years.

"Hatay, one of the provinces damaged in the earthquake, is one of the oldest settlements in the world and is a cultural mosaic where many cultures live together. Unfortunately, most of the historical buildings and settlements were seriously damaged by this earthquake," writes Dr. Saziye Ilgaz in Bursa, Turkey. Ilgaz is a tea specialist, researcher, and former head of technology at Caykur Ataturk Tea Research Institute. Antakya, historically known as Antioch, is the capital of Hatay province. According to the Associated Press, damage to the country is estimated at $84.1 billion.

The quake epicenter in the Parzarcik District, near Kahramanmaras, was 342 kilometers (213 miles) south and west of Rize, the heart of Turkey’s tea-producing region. Later that afternoon, a second major quake hit near Elbistan. The second epicenter is a 425-kilometer drive (about 263 miles by air) from Rize. The quakes caused extensive damage along the East Anatolian Fault, which runs through southern Turkey and rebel-held northern Syria. Relief Web reports 1,052 aftershocks.

“All of the tea factories and tea gardens are safe,” writes Ilgaz. ”No official statement has been made regarding the latest status of the tea houses in the earthquake zone,” she writes.

Tea drinkers in Turkey consume an average of 1,300 cups a year, much of it out of home, which is why there are Turkish tea houses in every town, city neighborhood, and village. Teahouses and cafes near the quake epicenters were vacant during the early morning disaster but are primarily located in street-level storefronts and likely crushed.

Authorities report more than 40,330 deaths in Turkey and more than 5,800 in Syria. At least 62,937 are seriously injured, with 500,000 homeless in Turkey and more than 100,000 homeless in Aleppo, Syria, where nine million are affected.

The World Health Organization describes the twin quakes "as the worst natural disaster in a century." Eight thousand were rescued in Turkey. Twelve days after the quake, rescuers pulled three people from the rubble in Antakya. Rescuers found a 26-year-old woman in Hatay alive after 201 hours, but few recoveries are expected a week after the quake hit.

Damage was reported in 10 Turkish provinces, home to 13.5 million of the country’s 86 million population. In Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter, whole blocks of residential buildings housing 100 to 500 people collapsed as they slept. At least 5,600 buildings were shaken to the ground in Adana, a city 100 miles southwest of the epicenter. The worst hit were Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir, Adana, Adiyaman, Malatya, Osmaniye, Hatay, and Kilis provinces. Relief workers estimate that 150,000 have been evacuated from affected provinces.

Planes carrying tons of food and clothing arrive steadily at airports in the affected region, including Aleppo International Airport in Syria. AFAD, The Turkish Red Cross, and the Ministry of National Defense have distributed 137,000 tents, 1.2 million blankets, and 3.3 million meals and mobilized hundreds of portable kitchens and catering vehicles.

The 7.8 magnitude quake struck Monday at 4:17 am local time and was followed by more than 100 aftershocks greater than magnitude four, with three registering six magnitudes or greater. Within twelve hours a second, a 7.6-magnitude quake hit Elbistan. More than 238,000 fire and emergency rescue workers, military, and police continue efforts to free individuals trapped in the rubble in freezing rain, snow, and cold.

In war-torn Syria, Civil Defense White Helmets are helping with evacuations and rescue. Countries worldwide offered the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs the services of 5,300 rescue and recovery teams. Aid is less forthcoming in rebel-held Syria after 12 years of war.

The Turkish Red Crescent responded with hundreds of catering vehicles and mobile kitchens stocked with 16,700 pouches of tea and almost 500,000 liters of water.

In 1999 a quake centered in northwest Turkey killed 18,000 people. Monday’s quakes are the most powerful to hit in the past century and the worst worldwide since Haiti in 2010, Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, told a news conference.

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