Gazoz Is the Drink of Fashionable Turkey

There are plenty of issues to drink in Turkey. Damascene retailers began the world’s first public coffeehouse in İstanbul in 1555 utilizing espresso from Yemen. Salep (floor orchid root served with sizzling milk) is standard throughout winter. Şalgam (fermented turnip juice) might be present in southern Anatolia and any of the nation’s kebab homes. Turkish tea served in gilded tulip glasses makes appearances after each meal. Ayran, a salty yogurt drink, and raki, a spirit fabricated from twice-distilled grapes and aniseed, duke it out as the highest contenders for nationwide drink.

All of those drinks have their events, however the full breadth of the nation’s flavors bubbles up in gazoz, a sort of soda that is available in an encyclopedia of variations in several areas throughout the nation, every reflecting native culinary influences. At the moment, you’ll be able to step into any cafe or neighborhood grocer to select up electrical blue, highlighter yellow, or fiery orange bottles in flavors like bubble gum, grape, rose hip, banana, honey, kaymak (clotted cream), and plenty of extra.

Past sheer selection, gazoz evokes Turkey’s place on the crossroads of worldwide tradition, coming into the world because the nation transitioned from empire to republic within the Twentieth century. And the drink continues to evolve alongside the tradition, including new flavors to the nation’s already inexhaustible bar.

From candy apricots to bitter almonds, gazoz flavors symbolize Turkey’s many cuisines

Simply as Italian areas boast their very own pastas and U.S. cities lay declare to varied kinds of barbecue, a rainbow of gazoz flavors make up a culinary map of Turkey. Whereas there are manufacturers that distribute throughout the entire nation (and some that export overseas), most are produced and consumed domestically, tapping into hometown pleasure in a rustic the place provenance is extraordinarily necessary. You’ll discover bottles formed like native landmarks, like that of Beyoğlu Gazozu, formed like İstanbul’s iconic Galata Tower, and types named for native slang, like Noriyon Gazoz (primarily What’s Up, Gazoz) within the central Anatolian city of Nevşehir.

Every space makes use of its personal mineral water and native produce to taste its gazoz. The Mediterranean metropolis of Mersin options blueberry gazoz. Bağlar Gazoz, named after a neighborhood within the Black Sea city of Safranbolu, produces a saffron and ginger soda that honors the town’s affiliation with the crimson spice. Kayısı Kola from the japanese Anatolian metropolis of Malatya, the apricot capital of the world, presents an apricot and basil pick-me-up. Marmaris, alongside the Turkish Riviera, is legendary not just for its seashores but additionally its huge pine forests, which taste a namesake Marmaris gazoz.

“We made a gazoz with a mixture of bitter and candy almonds,” says Kadir Ünal, the proprietor of Datçam within the slender Datça peninsula, which is well known for its almonds. “We knew it could be a loveable combine.” He boasts that locals and vacationers select it over Coca-Cola and even water.

David Lombeida

The historical past of gazoz, a drink for Twentieth-century Turkey

Lengthy earlier than soda emerged in Turkey, locals had been ingesting sharbat, a candy focus from flowers or fruit, that originated in Persia; the drink ultimately unfold to Europe and South Asia, spawning a wide range of drinks and desserts with related names. Europeans added fizz, making bubbly water infused with do-it-yourself easy syrups, fruits, and aromatics. The French known as it gazeuse, and when Ottoman retailers introduced this carbonated model again to Turkey on the finish of the nineteenth century, it grew to become gazoz.

Within the early Twentieth century, the instruments wanted to make sodas started showing within the Sirkeci and Karaköy neighborhoods of İstanbul. Varied communities, together with Greeks and White Russians, started producing their very own manufacturers. Town’s 1938 data present 4 soda factories: Olympos, Bomonti, Kocataş, and Yalova.

On the Turkish coast, the town and area of İzmir, wealthy in mineral water, shortly grew to become a key soda heart as properly. The Churchill, a blended drink of bubbly mineral water, lemon juice, and salt named after the town’s native son Churchill Ahmet, grew to become a calling card for the town and helped popularize the soda class. From there, the gazoz pattern caught wind throughout the nation.

“We had a robust tradition of sharbats, so ingesting one thing candy as a deal with was already standard,” says Turkish meals author Aylin Öney Tan. “However with gazoz, it grew to become all concerning the fizz, and every metropolis created their very own variation.”

David Lombeida

On the similar time, Turkey was experiencing dramatic political, authorized, and social reforms in an effort to turn out to be a secular nation-state. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of the Republic, was so impressed with the therapeutic properties of mineral water from the Anatolian city of Gazlıgöl through the nation’s Conflict of Independence that he donated a manufacturing unit there to the Turkish Crimson Crescent, who used the plant to bottle soda to fund their humanitarian work.

The beverage paired properly with the federal government’s disposition towards European-style modernity. It additionally match with nationalization efforts, because it was usually sweetened with native sugar beets, which grew to become the first supply of sugar after the Republic’s basis. Soda corporations unfold to the south and east, transported by donkey in locations with out automobiles. Gazoz grew to become one thing of a rallying cry for contemporary Turkey.

“Wherever there are Turks on this planet, there may be Uludağ Gazoz,” declared Uludağ, an organization that began as Nilüfer soda within the northwestern metropolis of Bursa in 1930. Within the south, the mayor of Adana inspired Suleyman Ayman to name his nascent model Zaman, Turkish for “time,” as a result of it encapsulated the trendy age taking up the town and the bigger Cukurova area.

“Folks had been on the lookout for some novelty, one thing completely different of their lives, together with of their ingesting habits,” explains Zafer Yenal, a sociology professor at Boğaziçi College. “It was additionally related with diversification of leisure actions, and the emergence of public areas and public life.”

Gazoz shortly usurped its rivals in new and previous social areas. Truck drivers not solely delivered crates of soda and ice to cities but additionally information, decreasing the necessity for social hubs like coffeehouses. Turks started having fun with gazoz whereas watching a soccer match or after a great sweat on the hamam or at film theaters. Kids performed video games within the streets with bottle caps. Folks drank it to sober up or with an aspirin to remedy abdomen troubles.

“It was a drink for everybody, changing into accessible for all as a consequence of its low-cost worth. At the moment, it unified all components of society — poor and wealthy,” says Burak Serkan Çetinkaya, a chef and the movie director behind the documentary Kapak Olsun concerning the tradition of gazoz.

By the Sixties, there have been 1000’s of native producers throughout the nation.

Joshua Levkowitz

Joshua Levkowitz

Gazoz and Goliath: Dealing with down large soda

If the Conflict of Independence set the stage for gazoz’s rise, the Chilly Conflict was nearly the soda’s undoing. Turkey joined NATO in 1952, bringing American troopers, vacationers, and shopper merchandise to the nation. The juggernaut Coca-Cola entered the nation in 1964 with its first manufacturing unit in İstanbul, and Pepsi adopted simply two years later. Quaint native flavors couldn’t compete with the overwhelming citrus, cinnamon, and vanilla that characterised international beverage giants. By the top of the last decade, Coca-Colonization was in full pressure, as the corporate organized Turkish pop festivals and held bottle cap campaigns for purchasers to win televisions and journeys to Europe.

Some gazoz corporations tried to imitate their worldwide rivals, swapping out quaint flavors for colas. Whereas just a few, like Uludağ, Niğde, and Çamlıca, had been in a position to pivot from native to nationwide manufacturing and distribution, most couldn’t compete with the People’ superior provide chains and deep promoting budgets.

This period of competitors has turn out to be ripe for mythos. Rumors swirled that worldwide soda corporations pressured the Turkish authorities to ascertain laws forbidding guide labor in soda manufacturing, squeezing out mom-and-pop producers, or that conglomerates employed goons to smash up native factories, or that Coca-Cola pressured Şişecam, the nation’s essential glass producer, into an unique contract for a decade, forcing gazoz producers to import dearer bottles from neighboring nations. Turkish leftists noticed Coca-Cola and Pepsi as a Computer virus for hegemonic American affect. A 1965 cowl of Yön, a left-wing journal, warned, “Coca Cola is poison, don’t drink it!”

Solely a tenth of gazoz corporations survived this era, and others have closed since. Although Suleyman Ayman’s son Ali was in a position to keep the household enterprise for many years, Zaman stopped producing its iconic red-and-white bottles of gazoz in 2023. His youngsters didn’t want to proceed the enterprise.

“Zaman will stay in individuals’s mouths perpetually,” he says bittersweetly.

The gazoz revival

Gazoz nonetheless has its followers. Many shoppers view manufacturers as contemporary and freed from pretense as in comparison with different kinds of soda, and so they buy gazoz as a possibility to advertise native foodways. Çetinkaya, as an illustration, says he all the time tries the native gazoz when touring to a brand new metropolis in Turkey.

Extra essentially, as globalization steamrolls over the nation’s distinct cuisines and unbiased manufacturers, small-batch gazoz represents a candy backlash. As Turkish society offers with cultural and political polarization and financial disaster, gazoz is an escape, churning up the kind of nostalji that Turks love.

“Folks aren’t anticipating a lot from the longer term lately right here,” professor Yenal says. “So there’s a renewed deal with the previous. Gazoz is a seek for stability to bind individuals to the bottom.”

Among the nation’s nervousness comes from its speedy urbanization during the last 20 years. From 2002 to 2018, the share of the inhabitants that lived in rural areas dropped from 35 p.c to 16. For the thousands and thousands who relocated, a style of house is only a bottle of gazoz away.

“Folks come to search out the gazoz from their childhood,” says Ufuk, a barista at Kapa Café. The İstanbul cafe serves 85 completely different manufacturers from throughout the nation. Whereas it appears to defy the locavore spirit of gazoz, it’s additionally a lifeline for longtime followers and a spot of discovery for neophytes.

David Lombeida

It’s not simply aged Turks searching for out flavors from their youth. On many days, younger college college students pile into Avam Café, additionally in İstanbul, to seize just a few bottles out of coolers. They get pleasure from their gazoz surrounded by previous posters that includes ecstatic ladies dancing in miniskirts and ingesting bottles of cherry soda.

“Gazoz producers laughed at me once I first ordered crates of their soda to the cafe. They thought nobody would purchase it,” says Ulas Bahçıvancı, who opened Avam in 2012.

Alongside cafes like Avam and Kapa, a 3rd wave of gazoz producers have emerged with new, artistic flavors that replicate the trendy tastes of their properties. Erenköy Gazozu, produced within the hip Kadıköy neighborhood on the Asian facet of İstanbul, makes small-batch flavors like cardamom-lemon and nutmeg-anise. And Şirince Gazozu, made within the stunning Şirince village south of İzmir, produces an elderberry-peach soda, in addition to a taste that makes use of a newly revived indigenous pressure of white grapes. Others, like Maki, proceed making gazoz underneath the identify seltzer.

Bahçıvancı additionally factors out that cafe house owners themselves are rediscovering the chances of creating soda from contemporary components. Sevda Gazozcusu, a soda store with 4 places, makes its personal in-house gazoz flavors, whereas Gazvoda Cafe in Çannakle presents handmade, beryl- and azure-colored sodas.

These newcomers nonetheless face an uphill battle towards worldwide manufacturers, however they clarify there’s loads of fizz left in gazoz.

Joshua Levkowitz writes about migration and fast-food tradition within the Center East and Mediterranean — by means of Louisiana.
David Lombeida is a photojournalist and filmmaker primarily based in Istanbul, Turkey, most not too long ago engaged on subjects of financial system, battle, and migration.