❊ Are Turkish Coffee Houses Better for Talking Politics Than Starbucks?

In a fascinating post for The Guardian, Kaya Genç compares American-style coffee chains (Starbucks et all) with Turkish coffee houses:

[the Starbucks-type chains] serve the customers with cheap coffee and leave them alone with their gadgets afterwards. But it is also easy to see what is lost when they are silently caressing their iPads: in Turkish coffee houses one finds a more noisy atmosphere, but also a real sense of community. […] Turkish coffee houses are still spaces for conversation rather than work. […] Their stories are erotic, clever, funny and pointedly mocking of the country’s politicians

When I think of Turkish coffee houses (which I assume are similar to the ones we have in Lebanon), I think of old, sometimes retired men (only men) playing backgammon, smoking, reading newspapers (the paper type) and talking very loudly about politics and people.

The clientele of a place like Starbucks is younger, but that doesn’t mean it’s not involved in a real “sense of community”. For all you know, the guy “caressing” his iPad could be running an insurgency in another country by building a community of anti-regime dissidents. He could be writing a blog post or editing a youtube video that can become a sensation, the same same sensation that men in Turkish coffee houses could end up talking about.

I get it, Turkish coffee houses are old and exotic, and there are people who will like that. Turkish coffee also tastes good. But to say that Turkish coffee houses intrinsically foster more conversation is more fetishist than rational. People in old Turkish (and lebanese, and Italian..) cafes simply talked more because they didn’t have laptops and internet connections.

Let’s spice things up a bit. Here’s what Steve Jobs thought of Turkish Coffee:

Which kids even in Turkey give a shit about Turkish coffee? All day I had looked at young people in Istanbul. They were all drinking what every other kid in the world drinks, and they were wearing clothes that look like they were bought at the Gap, and they are all using cell phones. They were like kids everywhere else. It hit me that, for young people, this whole world is the same now.

I’m not making Jobs’ argument in this post. All I’m saying is: Be always skeptical of arguments that ran along the lines of “back in the day, we used to make things better”. Yes, people talked more and gossiped more in the Turkish coffee house, but they also smoked a lot, didn’t allow women in and didn’t have air conditioning. And worse of all: They didn’t have Wi-Fi.