A baklava crawl in the Turkish city that's obsessed with the pastry

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — When visiting this historical southern Turkish city, it doesn't take long to discover its true passion: baklava.

So much so that Gaziantep has become synonymous with the sweet pastry, made of several layers of phyllo dough, filled with nuts and soaked in syrup or honey.

Shops across the city are adorned in green and gold — green for pistachios, gold for the dessert's flakey crust. Acres and acres of pistachio groves surround the city. Even at the airport, sculptures of the beloved seeds line the curbs outside the terminals.

Baklava is not unique to Gaziantep, and the city doesn't claim its origins. The pastry is feted in local cuisines of many countries, from Iran to Greece to Algeria. But no city has made baklava into a tourist attraction, a vast industry and a publ