10 Turkish Drinks to Try: A Local Guide to What to Sip in Turkey

If you only remember one thing from this post, make it this: in Turkey, what you drink is rarely an afterthought. A glass of tea closes a deal, ayran cuts the fat off a kebab, and a small cup of coffee is an excuse to sit with someone for an hour. So before you order on autopilot, here are the 10 Turkish drinks I’d actually tell a friend to try, what they taste like, and where the good versions are.

We have already covered plenty of the Turkish food to try on the site, so think of this as the other half of the table. Some of these are everywhere and cheap. A couple are seasonal and easy to miss. One is technically the national drink and comes with its own set of rules.

What are the most popular Turkish drinks to try?

The short answer: black tea and Turkish coffee for daily life, ayran with grilled meat, boza and salep in winter, raki for a long dinner, and a few fermented oddities like salgam and kefir that locals swear by. None of them are hard to find, and most cost very little.

Let me go through them one at a time, roughly in the order you are likely to bump into them.

Turkish tea: the drink you will be offered ten times a day

Start here, because you cannot avoid it. Cay (pronounced “chai”) is brewed in a stacked double kettle called a caydanlik and served in small tulip-shaped glasses, strong, hot, and usually with a couple of sugar cubes on the saucer. Shopkeepers offer it for free, friends order round after round, and a glass at a cafe costs almost nothing (at the time of writing, often around 15 to 30 lira).

Order it “acik” if you want it weaker, “koyu” or “demli” if you want it dark. Turkey is one of the biggest tea-drinking nations on earth, and most of the leaf comes from Rize on the Black Sea coast. If you only drink one thing on this list, it will probably be this, many times over.

Turkish coffee: small cup, big ritual

Turkish coffee is finely ground beans simmered in a small copper pot (a cezve), often over hot sand, and poured grounds and all into a tiny cup. It is thick, unfiltered, and meant to be sipped slowly while the grounds settle at the bottom. Say “orta” for medium sugar, “sade” for none. It comes with a glass of water and usually a small sweet on the side, and yes, people really do read fortunes from the leftover grounds.

UNESCO added Turkish coffee to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list, which tells you how seriously it is taken. For where to get a proper cup and the etiquette around it, I’d point you to our guide on where to drink Turkish coffee in Istanbul and the deeper history in Turkish coffee in Istanbul.

Ayran: the savory yogurt drink that fixes a heavy meal

Ayran looks like a glass of milk and tastes nothing like one. It is just yogurt, cold water, and a pinch of salt, whisked until frothy, and it is the single best thing to drink alongside a kebab or a lahmacun. Savory, cooling, lightly sour, with natural probiotics that genuinely help when you have eaten too much grilled meat (which, in Turkey, you will).

You will find it bottled in every shop, but the freshly churned version at a kebab house, served with a thick layer of foam on top, is the one worth ordering. That foamy glass next to a plate of grilled meat is one of the simplest, most satisfying things you will eat in Turkey.

Boza: the thick winter drink with a 150-year-old address

Boza is the one most visitors have never heard of, and the one I most want you to try if you come in the colder months. It is a thick, tangy, fermented drink made from millet or cracked wheat, slightly sweet and slightly sour, traditionally sold on cold winter nights by vendors calling “Booo-zaaa!” through the streets. It is served with a dusting of cinnamon and a handful of roasted chickpeas (leblebi) on top.

The place to drink it is Vefa Bozacisi, a tiny shop in the Vefa neighborhood that has been making boza in the same spot since 1876. It is now run by the fourth generation of the same family, and they still keep the glass Ataturk drank from on display. A glass cost around 60 lira at the time of writing. Note that boza is seasonal, so you will mostly find it from autumn through early spring.

Salep: a creamy orchid-root drink for cold days

Salep is winter in a cup. It is made from the dried, ground tubers of wild orchids, which thicken hot milk into a creamy, faintly floral drink, finished with a heavy dusting of cinnamon. Turks have been drinking it since at least the 8th century as a way to warm up when it is freezing outside.

One honest caveat: real salep is genuinely rare. Orchids take years to produce usable tubers, it takes over a thousand of them to make a single kilo of flour, and harvesting has put some wild species under threat, so Turkey banned exports of the real thing. A lot of what you are handed on the street is a flavored powder mix. It is still tasty and warming, but if you want the authentic version, ask, and expect to pay more for it.

Raki: the national drink, and the rules that come with it

Raki is the national drink, an anise-flavored spirit made from twice-distilled grape pomace. Pour cold water into a glass of clear raki and it turns milky white, which is why people call it “aslan sutu,” or lion’s milk. The order matters: pour the raki, then the cold water, then a single ice cube last (drop the ice in first and locals will tell you the aroma “crystallizes” and the taste suffers).

But raki is less a drink than an evening. You sip it slowly over hours at a meyhane (tavern), alongside a spread of cold and hot meze and, usually, grilled fish to finish. White cheese, melon, fried eggplant, and octopus are classic partners. People toast with “serefe” (cheers), and the whole point is conversation, not getting drunk. For the food side of the ritual, see our guide to the best Turkish mezes to try, and if you are wondering about the broader picture, can you drink alcohol in Istanbul answers the practical questions.

Turkish wine and beer: better than you’d expect

Turkey has been making wine for thousands of years, and the modern scene is quietly good, with native grapes like Okuzgozu, Bogazkere, and the white Narince worth seeking out. Efes is the everyday beer you will see everywhere, and there is a growing craft scene in Istanbul too. If wine is your thing, it is worth a short trip out of the center, which we map out in our roundup of Istanbul wineries worth visiting.

Salgam: the spicy fermented juice that pairs with raki

Salgam (pronounced “shal-gam”) is the wild card. Despite the name, which means turnip, it is mostly made from fermented black and purple carrots with bulgur, salt, and spices, and it comes either mild or “acili” (spicy). It is dark red, deeply savory, sour, and a little fiery in the spicy version. Southern Turkey, especially Adana, runs on it.

It is the traditional sidekick to raki and a plate of kebab, and the city of Adana even has a long-running festival built around exactly that trio. Order it spicy at least once, even if just for the experience.

Kefir and other yogurt drinks

Kefir is a fermented milk drink, tangier and fizzier than ayran, full of probiotics, and increasingly popular in Turkish supermarkets and breakfast spreads. It is an easy one to pick up bottled if you like the sour-yogurt family of drinks. Speaking of mornings, a proper Turkish breakfast in Istanbul is the natural place to sample tea, fresh juice, and sometimes kefir all at once.

Sherbet and dried mint tea: the sweet and the soothing

Two smaller mentions worth your time. Serbet is a family of sweet, fruit-and-flower syrups diluted with water, often pomegranate or tamarind, beautiful but very sugary, so treat it as a treat rather than a thirst-quencher. And dried mint tea with lemon (and a spoon of honey) is what Turks reach for when they feel a cold coming on. It is gentle, warming, and surprisingly nice even when you are perfectly healthy.

A quick word on tap water and where to drink these

You will notice almost everyone drinks bottled water with meals. If you are wondering whether that is necessary, our post on whether you can drink the tap water in Istanbul has the straight answer. Most of these drinks are sold everywhere, from corner shops to tea gardens, so you rarely have to go out of your way to find them.

So which Turkish drinks should you try first?

If you have one day, drink tea (you won’t have a choice) and a real Turkish coffee. If you are eating kebab, get ayran. If it is winter, hunt down boza at Vefa and a cup of proper salep. And if you have a long, lazy dinner ahead of you, settle in with raki, salgam, and a table of meze, and let the evening take care of itself. None of these will break the bank, and every one of them tells you a little more about how Turks actually live, one glass at a time.