Tea (Turkish: çay pronounced [tʃaj]) is a popular drink throughout Turkey and the Turkish diaspora. Turkey has the highest per-capita tea consumption in the world with an annual total consumption of over 3 kilograms per person. Turkey is a major exporter of tea, ranking fifth among the top exporting countries. Tea plays a big role in social gatherings that take place in tea houses and gardens. It is also used as a herbal medicine. Turkish tea culture extends to Northern Cyprus and some countries in the Balkan Peninsula. Turkish tea has a long and expansive history that shaped its harvesting even before the founding of the modern Turkish Republic. Since its introduction to Turkey, tea has become a large part of Turkish culture.

Since the mid-20th century most of the tea produced in Turkey has been Rize tea, a terroir from Rize Province on the Eastern Black Sea coast. Rize has a mild climate with high precipitation and fertile soil.

In 2019 Turkey produced 1.45 million tonnes of tea (4% of the world's tea), and was one of the largest tea markets in the world, with 1.26 million tonnes being consumed in Turkey, and the rest being exported. Turks drink the most tea per person at 3.16 kg each a year, or almost four glasses a day. Turkey has high import tariffs on tea, roughly 145%, which helps maintain the domestic market for locally produced teas.

However by 2023 production had fallen to just over 500 thousand tonnes, due to high temperatures and irregular rainfall.

In the later part of the 19th century, the nearby city of Batum, in what was then known as the Caucasus Viceroyalty (now known as Batumi in Georgia), was cultivating tea with great success.^{[citation needed]} This commercial growing region in Georgia had been started by the Russians importing tea seedlings from China.^{[citation needed]} With this fruition, the Russians looked towards Turkey to expand the crop. ^{[citation needed]}

Under the direction of the state and leaders, the Department of Agriculture selected the city of Bursa in order to evaluate the feasibility of tea cultivation by importing seedlings from Japan and China in 1888. There were issues with the growing of tea crops in Bursa as the land was found to be unsuitable for this crop.

Tea drinking was initially encouraged as an alternative to coffee after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Coffee had become expensive and, at times, unavailable in the aftermath of World War I. Upon the loss of Yemen Vilayet, where coffee was traditionally cultivated, coffee became an expensive import. Early tea cultivation experiments started in Rize Province in 1912, as an initiative by the Head of the Chamber of Agriculture, Hulusi Bey.

In 1918, botanist Ali Riza Erten was given government instruction to try tea cultivation in other regions of Turkey (including Rize Province, Artvin Province, Ardahan Province, and in Batumi in Georgia). He took detailed notes on the ecological factors that made for successful tea crops in Batumi and tried to find similar features in Turkey in his paper titled, Şimali Şarki Anadolu ve Kafkasyada Tetkikatı Ziraiye (Agricultural Investigations in North Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus). Erten eventually narrowed production down to the provinces of Rize, Artvin and Ardahan. However, during this time Turkey and its neighboring countries were in turmoil and tea cultivation was not a priority. Much of this research by Erten on tea cultivation was not used for another 10 years.