In recent years a new habit has caught the eye in how Turkish homes are decorated: coffee corners.
In a part of the kitchen, on a small shelf in the living room, or on a stylish console near the entrance, there are now coffee machines, capsules, special cups, flavoured syrups and small decorative objects. These are the tidy, aesthetic, photo-ready corners we keep running into on social media. In some homes the coffee corner has almost become a decoration standard.
Of course it is lovely when people create little pleasure spaces in their homes. Calming down around a cup of coffee, hosting guests or starting the day with a small ritual can mean something to anyone. I have nothing against that.
But whenever I look at this whole coffee corner phenomenon, another question keeps rising inside me:
When did we push the smell of tea so far into the background?
For Me, Tea Always Comes First
For me, tea always comes before coffee. Not only as a drink, but as a habit, an atmosphere, a sound, a smell and a memory.
In these lands tea is not just a hot drink sitting in a glass. It is the quiet hero of the breakfast table. It is what pulls us together after a tiring evening. It is the first thing asked when a guest arrives. It is the excuse for a short break at work. It is indispensable to long conversations, short silences, family tables and gatherings of friends.
If tea is brewing in a house, life is going on in that house.
In my view the smell of tea also touches a much deeper place than the smell of coffee. The smell of coffee is sharp, assertive and often announces itself at once. The smell of tea is plainer, more familiar and more like home.
When the steam of brewing tea spreads through the kitchen, a calm settles over you. That smell is not the smell of show but of preparation. It carries a feeling that someone is about to arrive, that you are about to sit down with someone, that the table is about to be set.
The smell of coffee is sometimes the smell of a café, a brand, a trend. The smell of tea is the smell of home.
What Do Coffee Corners Say?
Coffee corners represent not only the habit of drinking coffee but also a new aesthetic that has entered our lives in recent years. Everything is expected to be tidier, more photogenic, more shareable and more “visible”.
A cup of coffee is no longer just drunk; it is served with a candle, a book, a blanket, a wooden tray and the right camera angle. Even a small corner of the home is made to fit the social media aesthetic. With a capsule machine, a latte glass, coffee varieties with foreign names and objects lined up on shelves, a new lifestyle narrative is built.
From the outside this narrative looks harmless. But I think there is a deeper side here worth dwelling on.
Because habits like this often do not develop naturally. They are injected into our lives with a bit of marketing, a bit of social media, a bit of pop culture and a bit of the feeling that “everyone is doing it”.
Today, making a coffee corner at home is not only a personal choice; it also looks like the result of an invisible cultural steering. We are presented with it as if a coffee corner were one of the essentials of a modern, tasteful, well-kept and aesthetic home.
Yet in our homes there was already a drinking culture for years.
Its name was tea.
A Pop Culture Injected Afterwards
Coffee is of course not a completely foreign drink in this part of the world. Turkish coffee has a very old and strong place of its own. A cup of Turkish coffee is a tradition, a conversation and a culture of hospitality in itself.
But the coffee corners spreading in homes today lean less on Turkish coffee culture than on an imported café aesthetic. It is a space shaped by capsule machines, latte glasses, flavoured syrups, cold brew equipment, foreign coffee terms and decoration images circulating on social media.
So the matter turns into a lifestyle showcase built around coffee more than into drinking coffee.
I think we need to stop and think a little at this point. Are we doing this because we really need it, or because it is presented to us as beautiful, modern and “how it should be”?
Pop culture sometimes enters our lives very softly. First we see an image. Then we come across it at a friend’s place. Then we say “actually, it’s nice”. Then we look up and find we have started building the same corner in our own home.
There may be nothing wrong with this on its own. But the problem appears when we begin to belittle the simple and strong habits within our own culture.
When tea is shown as somewhat old-fashioned and coffee as more modern…
When the slim-waisted tea glass is considered ordinary and the big coffee mug more aesthetic…
When the teapot is seen as troublesome and capsule coffee as practical and cool…
That is where not just a drink preference but a shift in cultural perception begins.
Why Is There No Tea Corner?
One of the questions we should really be asking is this:
If drink corners have become so popular in homes, why does nobody make a tea corner?
Why are spaces shared on social media as “my tea corner” not nearly as common?
Yet tea sits at a much more central place in our daily life than coffee. We drink it in the morning, we drink it in the evening, we offer it to guests, we brew it at work, we drink it on a break on the road, we drink it on the ferry, and breakfast feels incomplete without it.
But when it comes to decoration, aesthetics and a shareable space, tea suddenly becomes invisible.
Perhaps because tea is too familiar to us, we do not notice its worth. Because it is always within reach, we think it ordinary. Yet people sometimes notice the value of what they are most used to last.
A teapot, a few slim-waisted glasses, a nice tray, a small sugar bowl, maybe a biscuit or a simit beside them… These could make a much warmer and more sincere space than a coffee corner.
But pop culture does not show us this as “cool” enough.
The Smell of Tea and the Memory of the Home
I love the smell of tea. Because to me the smell of tea reaches not only the nose but the memory.
The smell of tea coming from the kitchen in the early morning recalls childhood homes. Sunday breakfasts, family tables, the sound of water boiling on the stove, the steam of the teapot, the warmth of a slim-waisted glass…
There is a waiting in the smell of tea. It is as if breakfast is about to begin. As if someone is about to sit at the table. As if the house is about to fill with conversation.
The smell of coffee is often individual. It feels like one person’s own pleasure, own break, own moment. Tea is more shared. Even when drunk alone, it carries a crowded memory within it.
Even the question “shall I make some tea?” is an expression of closeness in itself. Sometimes it means “shall we talk?”. Sometimes it means “sit down a while”. Sometimes it means “you are not alone”.
That is why tea is not just tea.
Being Modern Does Not Mean Forgetting Our Own Scent
I do not want to be misunderstood. I have no objection to people who drink coffee, who build a coffee corner, who create such a space at home. Everyone’s pleasure, habit and sense of aesthetics is their own.
But I do object to what belongs to us being devalued.
Being modern should not mean abandoning our own habits. Building a beautiful home does not have to mean imitating a foreign lifestyle. To make a stylish corner we do not need a capsule machine, imported cups or the moulds that circulate on social media.
Sometimes the most beautiful corner is a teapot standing quietly in the kitchen.
Sometimes the most beautiful smell is not freshly ground coffee but freshly brewed tea.
Sometimes the most beautiful ritual is not a complicated recipe but the sentence “the tea is ready”.
Remembering Tea Again
Perhaps the point is not to defend tea against coffee. The point is to remember tea again.
Because tea is already in our lives. But perhaps we do not give it the aesthetic and emotional value it deserves. We see it as too ordinary. We behave as if, because it has always been there, it is not worth talking about.
Yet tea is one of the plainest and strongest rituals of our homes.
The sound of a tea glass, the steam of a teapot, that familiar smell spreading through the kitchen, the small plates waiting on the table… All of these are parts of a world that belongs to us.
Perhaps it does not look as photogenic as coffee corners. Perhaps it does not make the same impact on social media. But it is certainly more real, warmer and more our own.
For me, tea will always come first.
Because in tea there is more sharing than show.
In tea there is more waiting than hurry.
In tea there is more conversation than loneliness.
In tea there is more memory than trend.
And most importantly, in the smell of tea there is home.
Perhaps that is why, when I look at the coffee corners multiplying in homes in recent years, the same thing always crosses my mind:
You may have your coffee corner, and it may be beautiful.
But no corner can fill the place of tea.