TURKEY 9th March 2011

Özkan Yetik won the Turkish National Barista Championship 2011 after coming through against a strong field of other baristi at the Turkish Coffee Stars 2011 event in Antalya in early March, the SCAE's Turkish National Coordinator Serif Basaran reports. 

The new champion will go on to compete at the World Barista Championship to be held in Bogota, Colombia, June 2 - 5.

More champions chosen during the competitions will represent Turkey at the World Championships at the World of Coffee event in Maastricht, June 23 - 25. They are dual champion Seckin Sinanoglu (who triumphed in both the Coffee in Good Spirits and Cup Tasting competitions), Emre Tolan (the Latte Art winner) and Turgay Yildizli (who is the new Cezve champion).
 
A huge draw for the media this year was an enormous 31.5-square-metre picture of the famous founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Atatürk, constructed completely of cups of coffee, using 80 kg of coffee, 400 litres of milk and 600 litres of water, all contained in 6,050 coffee cups. It took 20 hours for National Coordinator Serif Basaran, and the baristi that helped him, to complete the mammoth task of putting it together before the Exhibition, but the effort paid off, as the striking image was broadcast on over 15 TV channels, published in 40 newspapers and on over 100 websites.

Pictured: the Atatürk image in coffee cups, which reproduced a classic image of the Turkish leader