Let’s Play Okey!

The setting for this scene of four men playing Okey seems to be a meyhane—a place for men to gather and drink alcohol—rather than Arif’s frequent teahouse setting. A classic Turkish board game, Okey was apparently brought to Turkey by those returning from Germany where they had been employed as “guest workers” between the 1950s and 1970s. While there, they came into contact with a game called Rummikub that evolved into Turkish Okey—a game played with the same set of boards and tiles but different rules.