Tea is a 'Republican' drink

(from my book of essays and sketches, 'Feelings Run Faster', published by Boyut, Nov 2012)

Turkish tea , widely consumed

across the country beyondsocial classes and geographic regions, is anothermanifestation of claiming ownershipof a product that is not Turkish per se, butwas made our very own through a cultural‘processing’. Tea as a plant did not grow inTurkey (at least endemically) until 1930sand tea as a drink was not an essential partof our lives. My father, a child in 1920s and30s used to drink milk at breakfast, whilemy grandfather additionally had a small cupof coffee with no sugar right after the breakfast and lunch.Tea is a “republican” drink, while coffeeis more “imperial”. Our cuisine has beensuccesful in , importing and incorporatingnon-self (“foreign, other”) tastes and dishesutilizing the exact same tongue and nose (fortaste and flavor) we used for ‘our’ very owntastes and dishes. We exploit the same neuralmechanisms when we import a behavioror a lifestyle using the same brain structurein order to generate a new “frame of mind”.Imitation may be one the underlying abilitiesfor this cultural transformation, andhave worked well in Westernization andIslamization of the society during differentperiods of history.

Turkish

Coffee

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YYazgan