The aim of this thesis is to obtain novel functional chickpea and chickpea products by incorporating bioactive green and black tea phenolics into Turkish Kabuli type chickpeas during controlled rehydration. The rehydration of chickpeas in green or black tea infusions and green tea extracts increased the total phenolic content and bioactive properties of chickpeas. Chickpeas rehydrated in green tea extract or green tea infusions for 2 hours showed almost 2.2 2.5 fold higher total phenolic content, flavonoid content and free radical scavenging based antioxidant capacity, and rehydrated in green tea extract, green tea or black tea infusions almost 2.2-2.6 fold higher antidiabetic activity than control chickpeas rehydrated in water. The increase of rehydration period from 2h to 10h could increase the total phenolic content and antioxidant activity of chickpeas, but the increased incubation period did not have any considerable positive effects on antidiabetic activity of chickpeas. No significant reductions were o served in total phenolic content, flavonoid content and antio idant activity of phenolic enriched chickpeas kept frozen at 18°C while some limited reductions were observed in phenolic content and antioxidant activity of phenolic enriched chickpeas dried and stored at +4°C for 3 months. The extraction and then characterization of the phenolic content, and antioxidant and antidiabetic activity of protein from phenolic enriched chickpeas clearly showed the binding of the incorporated phenolic compounds onto chickpea protein. Thus, it appeared that the protein extracted from phenolic enriched chickpeas could also be used as a functional food ingredient. This work clearly showed the possibility of obtaining functional chickpeas and chickpea protein by use of controlled rehydration in presence solutions containing green and black tea phenolics.