Diyarbakir
Turkey spent $300-450B suppressing Kurdish identity in its unofficial capital — destroying 3,428 villages while the city grew from 350K to 1.8M, proof that suppression amplifies resistance.
Turkey spent an estimated $300-450 billion trying to make Kurdish identity disappear in Diyarbakir. It failed. The unofficial capital of Turkey's Kurdish southeast has grown from 350,000 to 1.8 million inhabitants — swelling with displaced villagers, war refugees, and migrants even as the state destroyed 3,428 villages across the region and produced over 3 million internal refugees.
The suppression was systematic. A 1924 mandate banned Kurdish schools, organisations, and publications. Even the words 'Kurd' and 'Kurdistan' were criminalised. Kurds were officially classified as 'Mountain Turks.' In Diyarbakir, people were arrested for selling Kurdish music cassettes. The PKK, founded by Kurdish university students in Diyarbakir in 1978, launched an armed insurgency in 1984 that would kill at least 40,000 people over four decades.
Turkey banned the words 'Kurd' and 'Kurdistan,' classified 20% of its population as 'Mountain Turks,' and spent $300-450 billion trying to suppress an identity that only grew stronger under pressure.
The conflict followed a predictable biological pattern: suppression increased resistance. Every village destroyed pushed more families into Diyarbakir. Every cultural prohibition made Kurdish identity more politically charged. The city's walled old quarter, Surici — a UNESCO World Heritage site — became an epicentre of urban warfare when security forces fought youth militants in 2015-16, destroying substantial portions of a neighbourhood that had been home to 50,000 people.
Diyarbakir's economy remains underdeveloped compared to western Turkey, held back by decades of military conflict and underinvestment. Tourism, which briefly seemed promising given the city's 5,000-year history and extraordinary basalt walls, collapsed with the 2015 ceasefire breakdown. The southeast-northwest economic divide in Turkey maps almost exactly onto the Kurdish-Turkish demographic divide — the same territory, the same underdevelopment, the same grievance.
The PKK announced its dissolution in 2025 after its imprisoned founder called for disarmament. Whether this marks a genuine phase transition or another temporary ceasefire remains the defining question for Diyarbakir's future. The city's pattern is wolf-like: a territorial persistence that outlasts every attempt at eradication, adapting its strategy from armed insurgency to political participation without abandoning the territorial claim.