Free Thought Tea House, Tbilisi, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2014
The BBC’s Azerbaijan Service has just published my video report on the Free Thought Tea House in Tbilisi, Georgia. The piece is in Azerbaijani, but below is a brief description in English. I’ve covered Tbilisi’s tea houses serving as a meeting space for the whole region, before but this new venture takes things to whole other level.
Situated on a side street adjacent to the Heydar Aliyev Park in Tbilisi’s central historical district, the Free Thought Tea House is a new initiative intended to bring everyone, regardless of ethnicity, together. The brainchild of Elvin Bunturk, a 27-year-old ethnic Azerbaijani citizen of Georgia, the Free Thought Tea House is loosely modelled after its namesake in Baku, the Free Thought University, which had its doors sealed in April last year.
Although the tea house is a commercial endeavour, it also serves a more important altruistic purpose. Education and the exchange of ideas is key to encouraging the improvement of the situation in all three countries making up the region, Bunturk believes, and the tea house is intended to promote such goals. Formerly a Persian Tea House until he took over the venture earlier this year, Bunturk says he has great plans.
This week he opened a small restaurant above the tea house serving Azerbaijani national cuisine while books by authors such as Seymur Baycan grace the tables for patrons to read or borrow. Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists have also come to use the venue to hold social and work-related conversations on cross-border media projects. Georgian writers introduce the country’s literature to ethnic Azeri youth through events advertised on Facebook.
But Bunturk is most at home discussing the need for improving access to education for children in Georgia’s ethnic Azerbaijani-populated regions. Later, he says, he will expand that to reach all minorities in order to aid their further integration into mainstream Georgian society.
Free Thought Tea House, Tbilisi, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2014
