Rize

i.The Tea Coast and the Pontic Alps

Rize occupies a thirty-kilometre stretch of the eastern Black Sea coast, with the great mass of the Eastern Pontic Alps (Doğu Karadeniz Dağları) rising sharply behind it to the south. The province is small (about 3,920 km²) and modest in population (around 344,000), but its setting is unique in Türkiye: the coastal strip is narrow and densely populated, with terraced tea gardens climbing the steep slopes from sea level to about 800 metres; above the tea zone the forest gives way to alpine pasture; above the pasture, snow-capped peaks rise to nearly 4,000 metres. The single highest peak, Kaçkar Dağı (3,937 metres), is the third-highest mountain in Türkiye after Ararat and Süphan, and the principal summit of the Kaçkar massif that runs through the southern half of Rize province and into neighbouring Artvin.

The climate is the wettest in Türkiye. Rize receives between 2,200 and 2,500 millimetres of rainfall annually — three to four times the national average — concentrated in autumn and winter but distributed across every month. The humid maritime air rising up the steep mountain wall and the persistent fog that drapes the slopes for much of the year produce a landscape unlike anywhere else in the country: dense Black Sea rainforest of beech, spruce, and chestnut on the lower slopes; tea, hazelnut, kiwi, and tobacco on the cultivated terraces; high alpine pastures (yaylas) where the snow lies until June.

The wettest coast in Türkiye, the steepest, and the greenest — a province whose tea has anchored the daily life of the country since the middle of the 20th century.

ii.The Layered Etymology and the Ancient Layers

The origin of the name Rize is contested. Among the proposals: the Greek Rhisos ("rice"), reflecting a tradition that early rice cultivation took place in the coastal lowlands; the Pontic Greek (Rumca) Riza ("foot of a mountain"), reflecting the city's literal geographical position; the Ottoman Turkish rize ("small fragment, crumb"); and a more speculative derivation from a Saka-era place name Eriza, linked also to Erzincan. The first three are all linguistically plausible; the city's name has persisted across all of these traditions in varying spellings.

The earliest historical references to the Rize coast appear in the classical Greek geographical works. Herodotus records that the region was settled by Greek-speaking peoples from the Miletus colonisation of the Black Sea in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE — the same colonisation wave that established Sinope, Trabzon (the ancient Trapezos), and the other Pontic coastal cities. Pliny the Elder (Roman, 1st century CE) and the Roman-period Greek historian Arrian (in his Periplus of the Euxine Sea, c. 131 CE) both name Rize among the coastal cities of Pontus. From the 4th century BCE the country was incorporated into the Pontic Kingdom under Mithridates Ktistes (see the Amasya essay on the kingdom's founding) and remained Pontic until the Roman defeat of Mithridates VI Eupator in 66 BCE.

iii.Byzantine and Komnenos Rize

Under the Roman empire and then the eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire, Rize was a small but consistent coastal port on the Pontic shore. The city was part of the Khaldia theme (the great Byzantine military district of the eastern Black Sea, capital Trabzon) from the 9th century onward. From 1204 the city became part of the Empire of Trebizond — the Komnenos successor state to the Byzantine empire after the Latin sack of Constantinople — and remained so for the next 257 years. The Komnenos period saw the construction of the small Komnenos-era churches and watchtowers that survive in fragments along the Rize coast.

iv.The Hemşin Migration and the Long Cultural Layering

One of the most distinctive features of the Rize population is the Hemşin (Hemshin) community of the upper valleys — particularly in the Çamlıhemşin and Hemşin districts. According to a tradition first recorded in the 18th century and amplified in modern Hemşin scholarship, the Hemşin originated as Armenian-speaking Christian migrants from medieval Armenia who settled the eastern Pontic valleys in the 8th or 9th centuries (the name "Hemşin" deriving in folk etymology from Hamam-a Şen, "Hamam's settling," after a leader of the migration named Hamam). The Hemşin community gradually converted to Islam through the late Ottoman period, retained a distinctive Hemşince dialect (closely related to Western Armenian, mixed with Turkish), and developed a distinctive set of cultural traditions — the famous Hemşin tulum (bagpipe) music, the high-pasture festivals, the puşi head-coverings — that distinguish them clearly from both the Turkish-speaking and Laz-speaking neighbours.

The province carries other distinctive populations: the Laz people (Caucasian-language speakers, concentrated in the easternmost districts toward Hopa); the historic Pontic Greek-speaking villagers (largely absorbed into the Turkish population through the long Republican period); and the broader Turkish majority. The cultural mosaic, the distinctive musical traditions, and the famous Karadeniz folk dance (horon) together give Rize a regional cultural identity unlike anywhere else in Türkiye.

v.The Ottoman Conquest and the Pontic Mountains

Rize was incorporated into the Ottoman empire as part of Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror"'s conquest of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461. The city was administered as a kaza of the broader Trabzon Eyalet through most of the Ottoman period. The mountain country south of Rize remained one of the most difficult to govern in the entire Ottoman empire, with the steep terrain making centralised administration challenging; the high valleys retained substantial local autonomy under the Ottoman derebey ("valley lord") system. The local Tuzcuoğulları ("salt-merchant family") emerged in the 18th and early 19th centuries as one of the principal derebey lineages of the Rize coast, controlling much of the local trade and local administration until the 1834 Ottoman centralising reforms suppressed the family and exiled them to Rumelia.

Through the Ottoman centuries Rize remained a modest coastal town. The principal economic activity was the trade in the surrounding country's products — corn, dairy, hazelnuts, the famous Rize linen, and the small but distinctive Pontic shipping that connected the coast to Trabzon and Batum.

vi.The Russian Occupation (1916–18) and Liberation

The First World War brought the Russian fleet to the eastern Black Sea coast. On 24 February 1916, Russian land forces took the city after combined naval and land assault as part of the broader Caucasian campaign that also captured Erzurum and Trabzon (see the Trabzon essay). The Russian occupation of Rize lasted approximately two years, during which time substantial portions of the Muslim population were displaced inland into the mountain villages while local Pontic Greek and Armenian elements collaborated with the occupation forces. The collapse of the Russian war effort after the October 1917 revolution led to the Erzincan Armistice of 18 December 1917 and the subsequent withdrawal of Russian forces. Rize was liberated by Turkish forces on 2 March 1918, in the broader campaign that recovered the eastern provinces. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918) formalised the Russian withdrawal from the eastern Anatolian provinces.

vii.Atatürk, the Republican Period, and the Tea Economy

Under the Republic, Rize was constituted as the Rize Vilayet in 1924. The single most consequential 20th-century intervention in the provincial economy was the introduction of tea cultivation. The first attempts to cultivate tea on the eastern Black Sea coast date to the late Ottoman period, but commercial-scale tea agriculture began in earnest in the 1920s and 1930s after Atatürk's personal interest. A formative state visit on 17 September 1924 brought Atatürk to Rize, where he encouraged the systematic study of the coastal climate's suitability for tea cultivation. Commercial tea production began in the 1940s following the 1937 establishment of state research stations; the great expansion came after the Second World War, with the founding of the state monopoly Çay-Kur (formally established in 1971 after earlier state agency forms) and the spread of tea cultivation across the entire eastern Black Sea terraced country.

Today, the Rize–Trabzon coastline produces approximately 60 to 70 per cent of Türkiye's tea, and Türkiye is among the world's top five tea-producing countries by volume. Tea has become not just the principal economic activity of the province but the principal beverage of the country: the small red tulip glass of strong black tea, drunk hot and sweet throughout the day, is as deeply identified with modern Turkish daily life as any single cultural feature. The annual tea harvest, beginning in May and continuing through October with successive pickings, is the great seasonal rhythm of the Rize coast.

viii.Erdoğan, Modern Rize, and the High Pastures

Rize is the family-origin province of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose father's village of Güneysu sits in the mountain country south of the city. President Erdoğan was born in Istanbul (1954) but maintains a residence in Güneysu and visits the province regularly; his political identification with Rize has been a consistent feature of his career since the early 2000s. The construction of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Airport (now Rize–Artvin Airport, an offshore airport built on reclaimed land in the Black Sea) opened in 2022 and serves both Rize and Artvin.

The wider provincial economy rests on tea, the kiwi industry (which expanded rapidly from the 1990s), hazelnut cultivation in the lower-altitude valleys, dairy from the high pastures, and a growing tourism economy centred on the great Kaçkar massif and the Ayder Yaylası — the famous high pasture in the upper Çayeli valley, with its thermal springs, traditional wooden houses, and the views across to the Kaçkar peaks. The wider Kaçkar country (the Kaçkar Dağları Millî Parkı), with its dozens of glacial lakes, alpine pastures, and traditional villages (Pokut Yaylası, Sal Yaylası, the Çamlıhemşin valley), has become one of Türkiye's principal trekking and yayla-tourism destinations.

ix.Visiting Rize Today

Rize is reached by air into the new Rize–Artvin Airport (RZV), an offshore airport built on Black Sea reclaimed land, or by long-distance bus from Trabzon (an hour and a half along the coast) or further afield. The land border with Georgia at Sarp, in the neighbouring Artvin province, is two hours east of Rize city.

Three days is comfortable: a day in Rize city and the surrounding coastal tea-belt (the Rize Müzesi, the Çay Müzesi tea museum, the Rize Kalesi on the hill above the city, a walk through one of the working tea factories at harvest time); a day in the Ayder Yaylası and the Çamlıhemşin valley (the thermal springs, the traditional wooden houses, the Pokut and Sal yaylas above the village); a day for the Kaçkar foothills and the trek to one of the lower-altitude alpine lakes. Travellers with more time should add the Hemşin valleys, the Hopa coast east of Rize, and the upper Çoruh valley toward Artvin.

The Rize table is the Black Sea table at its strongest: the famous Karadeniz pidesi (the long oval Black Sea pide), mıhlama (muhlama) (the cornmeal-and-cheese dish that is the iconic Black Sea breakfast), laz böreği (the layered cream-filled pastry), hamsi (the Black Sea anchovy in dozens of preparations), and — above all — the Rize çayı, the famous Rize tea, drunk strong and hot and sweet, in the small tulip glass, throughout the day. For the broader Black Sea table, see Anatolian Tables; for recipes, our sister site TurkishCooking.com.