page_title: Diyarbakır
section_title: Republic of Turkey
hierarchical_section_title: Diyarbakır / History / Republic of Turkey
caption_attribution_description: City Wall and Battlements - Diyarbakir - Turkey
context_page_description: Diyarbakır is one of the largest cities in Turkey. Situated on the banks of the Tigris River, it is the administrative capital of the Diyarbakır Province of southeastern Turkey. It is the third-largest city in Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Region, after Şanlıurfa and Gaziantep.
  Diyarbakır has been a focal point of the conflict between the Turkish state and various Kurdish insurgent groups. Many Kurds view Diyarbakir as the capital of Kurdistan.
context_section_description: In January 1928, Diyarbakır became the center of the First Inspectorate-General, a regional subdivision for an area containing the provinces of Hakkari, Van, Şırnak, Mardin, Siirt, Bitlis and Şanlıurfa. A Inspectorate-General had wide ranging authorities over all civil, military and educational matters. The post of the Inspectorate-General was abandoned in 1948. But its legal framework was only abandoned in 1952 under the government of the Democrat Party. In a reorganization of the provinces, Diyarbakır city was made the administrative capital of the Diyarbakır Province. In 1993 Diyarbakir was established as a Metropolitan Municipality. Its districts are Baĝlar, Bismil, Ergani, Hazro, Kayapinar, Çermik, Çinar, Eğil, Dicle, Kulp, Kocaköy, Lice, Silvan, Sur, Yenişehir and Hani.
  During the 1980s and 1990s, at the peak of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) insurgency, the population of the city grew dramatically as villagers from remote areas where fighting was serious left or were forced to leave for the relative security of the city. After the cessation of hostilities between the PKK and the Turkish army, a large degree of normality returned to the city, with the Turkish government declaring an end to the 15-year period of emergency rule on 30 November 2002. Diyarbakır grew from a population of 30,000 in the 1930s to 65,000 by 1956, to 140,000 by 1970, to 400,000 by 1990, and eventually swelled to about 1.5 million by 1997.
  The 41-year-old American-Turkish Pirinçlik Air Force Base near Diyarbakır, known as NATO's frontier post for monitoring the former Soviet Union and the Middle East, closed on 30 September 1997. This closure was the result of the general drawdown of US bases in Europe and the improvement in space surveillance technology. The base housed sensitive electronic intelligence-gathering systems that monitored the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Russia.
  Diyarbakır has been the victim of terror attacks in recent years. In 2008, a car bomb exploded in the city, killing five people, a blast for which nobody claimed responsibility. In 2015, a political rally of the People's Democratic Party was targeted, killing three people and injuring over 100. And in 2016, two separate attacks in February and March, each killing six people. In November 2016 ISIL perpetrated an attack that killed 9 people and wounded more than 100. In January 2017 another attack was perpetrated against the police, in which 4 police officers died.
  Between 8 November 2015 and 15 May 2016 large parts of Sur were destroyed in fighting between the Turkish military and the PKK.
  A 2018 report by Arkeologlar Derneği İstanbul found that, since 2015, 72% of the city's historic Sur district had been destroyed through demolition and redevelopment, and that laws designed to protect historic monuments had been ignored. They found that the city's "urban regeneration" policy was one of demolition and redevelopment rather than one of repairing cultural assets damaged during the recent civil conflict, and because of that many registered historic buildings had been completely destroyed. The extent of the loss of non-registered historic structures is unknown because any historic building fragments revealed during the demolition of modern structures were also demolished.
caption: Keçi Burcu, the Goat Tower, a section of the city wall of Diyarbakir
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