ISTANBUL – For years, Varan Suzme has been visiting the Kiral Coffeehouse near his house, where men from his Istanbul neighborhood chat for hours, sip from tiny, steaming cups, and play backgammon and cards.
“I came here every day,” said Mr Suzme, 77, a retired clothes salesman. “This is our second home. It’s a place I love, I see my friends and I’m happy and I play. “
Until the pandemic. A lockdown earlier this year closed coffeehouses across the country, as well as bars and restaurants, and when the government allowed them to reopen in June it banned the usual games and said they increased the risk of virus transmission.
Customers, mostly middle-aged and retired, stopped coming for fear of the virus, and with banned games, coffee house owners saw business shrink. Even before another lockdown went into effect this month, they feared that the coronavirus could endanger the survival of many coffee houses and rob the country of an essential center of Turkish life.
The Turkish coffee house is a one-of-a-kind men’s reserve, ranging from a post office to a social club that is fueled with cups of coffee – or now, when tastes change, tea. In every neighborhood, from the narrow streets of Istanbul to the ancient cities dotted around the country, men stop on the way to and from work, retirees meet and exchange gossip and political parties.
“We miss our friends and play backgammon,” said Mamuk Katikoy, 70, when he recently came for an interview at the Kiral Coffeehouse in Istanbul’s Yesilkoy district. “I haven’t seen this man in eight months,” he said, greeting a 90-year-old friend who also stopped by.
Several coffee shop owners complained that the religiously conservative government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was against the games because of its association with gambling and that the ban was more ideological than hygienic.
The country was already in an economic downturn when the pandemic hit, and with scarce government aid, many businesses were forced to shut down for good.
Several famous cafes in Beyoglu’s artistic district have closed in recent months. They had introduced Italian espresso to Istanbul society – the now closed Simdi Cafe was famous for its espresso machine from the 1960s – and represented a prime of intellectual and artistic life in Turkey.
The traditional Turkish coffee house is a more humble affair where the regulars are mostly workers who play cards, backgammon, and “okey,” a game similar to rummy and played with numbered tiles. Some coffeehouses charge hourly fees for games that are in progress, while others make their living only from the drinks they serve.
But without games, the business between locks was so bad that most of the coffee houses were closed or had few customers. Owners warn that they may have to close permanently without further government help.
“Our stores are empty,” said Murat Agaoglu, head of Turkey’s Federation of Coffee Houses and Buffets, who predicted that 20 percent of the country’s coffee houses would shut down.
That could rob Turkey of a pillar of its communities that is almost as old as drinking coffee. The custom spread from Arabia north to Turkey and further to Europe in the 16th century.
The first coffee houses in Turkey were founded by two Syrian merchants in the Tahtakale district of what was then Constantinople, near the seat of power of the Ottoman Empire and in the teeming streets of the spice bazaar.
“At that moment, Istanbul was one of the most populous cities in the world,” said Cemal Kafadar, Professor of Turkish Studies at Harvard University. “Imagine the commercial potential of this innovation. Within half a century there were hundreds of coffee houses in the city. And since then we have been able to enjoy the blessed brew of this blessed bean privately or publicly. “
The court of the Ottoman sultans dealt with drinking coffee. Artisans made tiny, delicate cups and narrow-necked coffee pots, women began serving coffee to guests in their homes, and men gathered in coffeehouses and smoked tobacco in extravagantly long-stemmed pipes. Later the aqueduct became fashionable.
The coffeehouses became meeting places for business people to socialize, but they also became centers of literary activity and public entertainment. Some had reading rooms or housed storytellers and puppeteers. Many still have names that go back to their Arabic origins: “kahvehane”, which means “coffee house”, and “kiraathane”, which means “reading house”.
The coffeehouses inevitably became centers of political gossip and activism, as they did across Europe, and closed regularly as political agitation increased, Kafadar said.
Updated
Dec. 15, 2020, 3:03 p.m. ET
Over time they lost their standing in the eyes of the more educated urban public and gradually became cheap hangouts for workers. “From the middle of the 19th century, modernizers associated it with idleness and backwardness,” said Kafadar.
The traditional coffeehouses, which are regulated by the government, are allowed to sell tea, coffee, and other soft drinks, including salep, a popular orchid bulb drink from Ottoman times.
The drinks and games, as well as the prices, are listed in the license that is affixed to the wall of the coffee house. The prices are regulated and set low.
They serve traditional Turkish coffee, each cup individually brewed, bitter or sweet to taste, and small glasses of strong black tea. Aqueducts are still listed among the listings, but Mr Erdogan’s government banned indoor use more than a decade ago.
For Guven Kiral it was his life to run a coffee house. He inherited his from his father and moved it to new premises in the same neighborhood.
“This place is like my kid,” he said. “I have a son, but it’s like a second son to me.”
On busy days, 60 people would play, he said, but the pandemic has put an end to that, silencing the shuffling of cards and the sharp click and hit of backgammon pieces.
“When I open, customers come for tea and sit for a while, but then they say, ‘Sorry, there are no games’ and leave,” said Mr Kiral, who fears he will be forced to close down forever. “We’re racing downhill. The pandemic has caused us a great loss. “
He demonstrated his anti-virus hygiene system: spread out disposable tablecloths, break out a new deck of cards for each game, and soak the backgammon counters in detergent. The tables would be widely spaced and even expanded to separate customers, he said.
“The big problem is the ban on games, both for the customers and the people who work in these places,” said Bendevi Palandoken, head of the Turkish Chamber of Crafts, which represents owners and workers in 120,000 coffee houses across the country. “We want the government to reduce the burden of social security and cash benefits for breadwinners.”
A flyer on the wall at the Kiral Coffeehouse reads, “We ask the government, do you care?”
Mr Kiral said he would be heartbroken and lose business.
“For my regular guests, the separation will be the first. You won’t see any more people, ”he said. “We’d lose our jokes, our laughter.”
On a broader level, he said that the entire older generation would be punished. “The costs will be for a specific age group. You will have nowhere to go. “
