Eat Turkey!
Bring your sweet tooth to Gaziantep! There are fried, sugary, syrup-coated things for sale everywhere, in the form of rings, churro-style sticks, balls, rolls...it's pretty amazing. Some are crispy outside, stuffed with a creamy sugary mass inside. Intense. Walk along any side street and look for the glistening golden-brown delicacies in the open storefronts.
Other pastries are amazing here as well—the baklava I had in Antep was the stickiest and sweetest I've had in my life. Bureks, with lamb or spinach or cheese tucked between their flaky layers, were my favorite breakfast.
The delicious traditional-style "K. Maras" or just "Maras" ice cream (dondurma) is widely available throughout the south. Made with salep, dried orchid bulbs, this ice cream has an incredibly dense, stretchy texture and an unforgettable mouthfeel. Average price was .75YTL - 1.5YTL per giant scoop, with chocolate, vanilla, lemon and pistachio being the most common flavors.
Fresh juice is also easily found, the cheapest usually being orange or lemon juice. It's on par with prices in Aleppo's juice street, allowing for the exchange rate difference. The options are vast, including sour cherry and melon.
Gozleme is another treat of the central/southern Turkish regions, and while it's certainly available in Istanbul, it won't be in every other shop like in Urfa, Antep, and throughout Cappadocia. Gozleme are basically Turkish crepes, with a lovely spongy texture, filled with cheese or meats. In Istanbul, restaurants that serve gozleme tend to put costumed women in the window, displaying them hard at work preparing the pancakes. In Antep it feels real—the restaurants are small and cozy and cater to locals only.
Eat lots of kebabs. Eat kebabs for every meal if you can handle it. Have kebabs with eggplant, have them baked or grilled, have them with yogurt, and PLEASE eat Iskender kebab, a caloric bomb involving thinly sliced doner meat over chunks of pide bread, soaked in tomato sauce and topped with yogurt.
In Antep I met up with someone for lunch, allowing for a shared feast. We ate at the famous Imam Cagdas, a very old restaurant widely respected for its baklava. We stuffed ourselves with 3 delicious varieties of kebabs in one meal, plus my new love lahmacun, like a very thin lamb pizza. Dessert was the heavenly baklava, more than I could finish. It was pricier than expected at 30YTL for two, but completely worthwhile.
Altin Sis is a very friendly restaurant in Urfa, on Sarayonu Caddesi. The Iskender kebab here is excellent. The dish was actually invented in Bursa and is available nationwide, but since I didn't visit Bursa, I never had its equal outside Urfa. Altin Sis had exceptionally moist doner meat, very flavorful sauce, and the portion was generous enough for two meals, especially with the extra pide thrown in.
The staff of Altin Sis is also very friendly, with at least one English-speaker. They also serve delicious spicy adana kebabs, which are not mouth-on-fire spicy but just full of great flavor, and icli kofte, deep-fried egg-shaped parcels containing spiced minced lamb. The usual price range for these dishes is 5.50 - 7YTL.
You should have a high tolerance for lamb to fully enjoy eating in Turkey. Afiyet olsun!