Gaziantep

The mound on which the castle stands has been occupied since antiquity, and the settlement below it, known as Aintab, grew where the roads between Anatolia, Aleppo and the Euphrates crossed. Hittite, Assyrian, Persian, Roman and Byzantine powers all held the district, and the nearby cities of Doliche and Zeugma were important in Roman times, the latter a legionary town and river crossing on the frontier with Parthia. Arab armies took the region in the 7th century, and the castle was repeatedly rebuilt.

Aintab passed through Seljuk, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Dulkadirid hands before the Ottomans took it in 1516. Under Ottoman rule it prospered quietly as a market town known for copper, leather, textiles and its orchards of pistachio and olive, with a mixed population of Turks, Kurds, Armenians and a smaller Jewish community. The stone hans and courtyard houses of the old quarter date largely from these centuries.

The modern city was shaped by war. The Armenian population was deported and massacred in 1915, and after the First World War the town was occupied first by British and then by French forces; a siege and resistance in 1920–21 caused heavy casualties, and in 1921 the Turkish parliament granted the honorific Gazi, meaning veteran or war hero, producing the present name. Industrialisation after 1950 turned Gaziantep into one of Turkey's manufacturing centres, and the population multiplied. Since 2011 the city has taken in one of the largest Syrian refugee communities in the country, and in February 2023 two major earthquakes struck the region, killing many and damaging buildings across the city, including the castle.

Food is the city's public identity. Gaziantep was named a UNESCO City of Gastronomy in 2015, the first in Turkey, and residents discuss the correct way to make baklava, beyran and katmer with the seriousness other cities reserve for football. Meals are long, shared and generous, and refusing a second helping requires persistence. The pistachio harvest, the copper trade and the sweet shops are all part of the same civic story.

Craft work survives in the bazaars: coppersmiths beating trays in the long coppersmiths' market, and shoemakers stitching the flat leather yemeni sandals particular to the region. The restored hans of the old town house workshops and cafés, and the city has invested heavily in conservation since the 2000s.

The population is mixed. Turkish and Kurdish are both widely spoken, and Arabic has become common since 2011, when Gaziantep became a centre for Syrians who crossed the border; many businesses, particularly bakeries and restaurants, are Syrian-run. The city's social codes are conservative and family-centred, with large weddings, strong neighbourhood networks and mosque attendance high. Local identity is strongly tied to the resistance of 1920–21, commemorated in street names, statues and a museum below the castle.

About two million people live in the city, which makes it one of the largest in Turkey, and the province holds a little more. It is young and fast-growing, and much of that growth has come from migration, first from the surrounding countryside and since 2011 from Syria; hundreds of thousands of Syrians have settled here, making the city one of the most affected by the war next door.

Gaziantep is a manufacturing centre in a way few Turkish cities outside the Marmara region are. Its industrial zones produce machine-made carpets, textiles, plastics, shoes and processed food, and export a great deal of it; agriculture in the province supplies pistachios, olives, grapes and peppers. Wages are modest, work is often long, and the business culture is family-run and trade-focused.

Everyday rhythms mix industrial and traditional. Factories and offices run to a standard working week, while the bazaars open early and the soup houses open earlier still, serving beyran to people starting a shift. Summer evenings fill the parks and tea gardens once the heat drops, and family visiting takes up much of the weekend. The 2023 earthquakes left a lasting caution about older buildings, and reconstruction and housing costs remain a preoccupation.

Gaziantep is the city Turks name first when they discuss food, and the pistachio is the reason for much of it. Local nuts, small and deep green, go into baklava made with dozens of layers of hand-rolled pastry and clarified butter, cut in squares or rolled around a filling; the city's version holds a European protected designation, and long-established shops ship it across the country. Katmer, paper-thin dough folded around clotted cream and pistachios and baked until crisp, is eaten at breakfast.

Savoury cooking is meat, bulgur and pepper. Beyran, a soup of lamb, rice and garlic in a peppery broth, is a morning dish; ali nazik sets sautéed lamb over smoked and pureed aubergine, served with garlicky yoghurt. İçli köfte, lahmacun, stuffed vegetables and a long list of kebabs with aubergine, garlic or sour cherry fill the rest of the repertoire, and dried red pepper, sumac and pomegranate syrup give the food its sour-hot edge.

The sweet and drink list is equally distinctive. Künefe with stretchy cheese, walnut and pistachio pastries, fruit leathers pressed from grapes and mulberries, and pekmez, boiled grape syrup, are sold in the bazaars. Menengiç, a milky drink made from ground terebinth berries, is the local alternative to coffee, and tea accompanies every transaction in the copper market.