The Zoo (Hayvanat Bahcesi) in Gaziantep is rather new: it opened in 1998 and if you go there, in many spots you will see people working to make the Zoo bigger and more beautiful. There is a traditional Zoo-part where you can watch animals and a Safari-part where you can only enter in a bus. I couldn’t enter because I did not find the bus, maybe because it was winter when I visited, with few visitors at all.
The Zoo-part has large cages especially for the predatory animals, deers, camels, elephants, cangaroos and the like. Only the monkeys were in small, unattractive rooms maybe because of the winter time. The large cages outside were empty, that might be their normal homes.
The Zoo Gaziantep is a nice place to visit. It has strong educational aims, the Zoological Museum contains many examples of all kinds of animals 
(be aware: all signs here are in Turkish only – either you can explain the animals to your children yourself or bring a dictionary) and it is fun to walk around.
There are a few places where you can eat or drink something – it is not allowed to bring food in the park that could be given to the animals such as grapes or nuts. Your bag will be checked at the entrance for that purpose. There is also a place to do your prayers (Mescid) and you find it on the signs (at the bottom of the picture).
The Zoo Gaziantep is large so you will be walking around to see all the animals. Think about that in the heat of the summer and go early in the morning. All places are accessible by wheelchair; differences in height might mean you need some help at certain spots.
What I liked most in the Zoo Gaziantep: the albino king snake; and, big surprise for a Dutch person to find that in a Zoo: the cow!
How to get there
Around the Zoo is an enormous park, you pay a small entrance price to get in. Follow the road through the parc and you will end up at the Zoo. The parc is a real family and friends parc with all necessary and also child-friendly facilities where you can sit, eat, sing, have a barbecue: an excellent combination with a visit to the Zoo.
The Zoo is about 15 kilometers from the center. The best is to take a taxi (cheap in Western standards) that will bring you to the entrance of the Zoo itself. Another options is what Syrian refugees do (there are many Syrian refugees in Gaziantep and they do visit the Zoo): take the tram until the endpoint Adliye and walk from there: 2-3 kilometers through the park.
See also: http://www.zoos.mono.net/12234/Gaziantep**
Another special site to visit in Gaziantep:
A kastel is not a castle in Gaziantep
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Other ‘puppets’ make clear how women and even children were filling the bullets.
made quite explicit in several puppets. The picture here shows the underground hospital and you can see the blood run.
Most of all however, I liked the rattles. When the French started to shoot and the Turks didn’t have enough ammunition, they would play the rattles to imitate gunfire. I got a demonstration from my guard, it was brilliant – you’d really think that a well equiped army is responding to your gunfire…
It is nice and well enough restaured for a good impression what the castle was like in the old days.
Lots of kids are visiting the castle to learn about the war but also many Turks from Gaziantep and elsewhere show indepth interest in the exposition.
More on this subject: 
Also they have touchscreens where you can look up the mosaic you prefer and watch it in detail; or another touchscreen where they show you ‘land’ and you have to guess which mosaic lies under the ground. The only thing lacking is the translation of Greek texts: some mosaics show texts and you’d like to know what they say. You’d expect a museum to explain that to its visitors…
1. The Gypsy Girl, who has somehow become the symbol of Gaziantep; she is everywhere in the streets, in shops, on the airport. They gave here a special place in a dark room where no one enters without the presence of a museum guard. And there she is, in the dark, brilliant and mysterious in the same time, uniquer than unique among all the mosaics. Indeed it is a masterpiece. While I was standing there alone in the dark, she seemed to look right through me…
2. The Galateia mosaic, seen from above. Some mosaics have more worked out details or fuller images. I liked this one because of the balance and the colours. A description of the Galateia story can be found on the website of the museum (in English and Turkish, if you like), 
3.The out-of-the-box mosaic. I haven’t got a clue what it is but I adored it immediately. It is one of the more recent mosaics. Apparently, in that period, they started to put images in the mosaics just where they wanted – at random – no apparent rules were followed any more. I imagine that it was a breakout from all the detailed work that was done during ages; and how free it felt and how it was criticized by traditionalists and knowledgeable people and all those who feared that craftmanship was now about to disappear, to be replaced by art work that ‘even my three year old son can make’.
yet rather small in size and hidden in a back street.
If you think like me, that ‘old’ starts at least in the era BC, this museum is your place to be! Some examples: they got a range of children’s toys (‘cars’) from the early bronze age (3000-2000 BC). The picture shows 2 of them. They got lots of gold from 100 BC 
(Greek). While I was watching it, I looked around full of sorrow: was this place really well protected? The Medusa Museum gives you the idea of a home, rather than a museum with full security equipment… I thought (you never know). 
They reminded me of findings in Malta, where the same kind of mother goddess or fertility statues were found and nobody can explain what culture they belonged to, what they mean. There is a similarity with the figurines shown in the Medusa Museum which would support the theory that in ancient times certain places served religious rituals with regard to fertility and/or the female godess.
e. To finalize: there is some amazing Roman stuff (more recent, 100-200 AC):
the only inhabitant left in mine workers houses, almost forgotten by the world, becomes a monument of resistance; and so on. What is absolutely unique about this road movie that could also be called a road documentary, is the normality shown in its full brilliance. It shows that normality can be infinitely more interesting and great than the special.
From a vivid wheelchair run through Musée du Louvre in Paris to sharing sadness and perspectives on life: it forms one breathtaking story for the spectators.
(the Turkish side), the Greek graveyards may have been destroyed deliberately as they are all in a devastating state. The situation for Turkish cemetaries in the South of Cyprus (the Greek side) is different, he says. This raises questions about why this is the case and M. Thorsten Kruse comes – roughly – to conclusions as I formulated in 
give up hope for Arab leadership and think that the French offered more. Boudjedra shows how cruel the French regime has been in Algeria; even though that did not improve after the Algerian independence, that does not mean that he feels nostalgia for the French colonial times in Algeria, on the contrary: he is rather inclined to conclude that cruelty and barbarity is part of human history, in whatever shape or nationality.