History of Turkish coffee on display

Istanbul's Topkap? Palace Museum is hosting a new exhibition, featuring the 500-year history of Turkish coffee. Organized in collaboration with the Turkish Coffee Culture and Research Association, the exhibition, titled "A Drop of Pleasure: 500 years of Turkish Coffee" opened on Feb. 17 at the museum's Has Ah?rlar section with the attendance of Culture and Tourism Minister Ömer Çelik.

Speaking at the ceremony, Çelik said Turkish coffee was an inevitable part of social life, not only of eating and drinking culture. 

He said Turkish coffee culture dated back to the 16th century, and it had particular importance in the Ottoman Empire, both in the palace and daily life, as socio-cultural event.

"Beyond being a drink, coffee exists in the center of a big cultural structure. It also has a very important place in daily life. It used to be prepared and drank in coffee houses and movable coffee cookers. The coffee houses, where coffee culture had been surviving for hundreds of centuries, also hosted traditional Turkish arts such as shadow play, eulogy shows and theater-in-the-round," the minister said, adding that coffee was born in Yemen and expanded west thanks to the Ottomans.

He said the Ottoman Empire, which was dominant on the trade routes between the east and west, spread coffee and helped it be loved by Europeans during diplomatic relations.

"For example, during his ambassadorship in Paris, humorist Süleyman Agha promoted coffee to French culture. When he was returning to the empire, his Armenian-origin assistant stayed in Paris and opened a coffee house. Another striking example is that after the Siege of Vienna in 1683, the first coffee houses were opened in Vienna with 500 sacks of coffee left by the Ottoman Empire....