Nov 19 - Take the long taxi ride out to the otogar and wait around for our bus. As it happening a lot lately, it is late.
The route goes west and then curves a bit north. About halfway through the trip (3 hours) we suddenly hit terrain with basalt boulders. There are extensive lava flows in the region around Diyarbakir. I do not know their specific ages, but in general the flows in Eastern Anatolia are Holocene and even younger. This is the first obviously volcanic terrain I’ve seen in the country.
Something about the location of these Turkish bus stations. They are all, way, way out of the town center. Every time we pull into one, I feel like the city is just apartments and industrial complexes, with no character, drab and uninteresting. It takes the subsequent taxi ride into the downtown area to perk me up and feel like there is some life to the place.
In the case of Diyarbakir, the station is located in a maze of apartment buildings, seemingly hundreds of them, all the same, and none looking older than about five years, with many more under construction. It seems that there is expectation that this city is going to grow phenomenally larger, or already is doing so.
Take a taxi for the long drive into the old town. It sits at the eastern edge of the city, and is still surrounded by a basalt city wall (reconstructed). Our hotel is a block within this wall.
Walk down the main north-south street (Gazi Caddesi) to what looks like a main plaza in front of Ulu Camii (Great Mosque). Half of it is covered in tiny tables, all full of men stooping over to drink tea. The plaza itself is made of basalt blocks, as is the façade of the mosque. Unsurprisingly, the quantity of basalt used has been increasing since Gaziantep. Go to an upstairs café across the street for a late lunch.
The streets feel like what we’ve seen in the last few cities, but I note a bit of difference in the way some of the women dress. Diyarbakir has a population of about 1.5 million, about a third of it is Kurdish. It is by far the largest grouping of Kurds in a large Turkish urban center.
Since we are here, time to talk about Kurds! The term ‘Kurdish’ applies to a large number of people, somewhere between 30 and 45 million, whose native lands are now divided between Türkiye, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Most are Muslim but not all, and who speak some form of the Kurdish group of languages. There are three major dialects. I do not know a word in Kurdish, so as we are walking around I have no chance of identifying people speaking it. As far as I can tell, most people are speaking Turkish, and occasionally I hear Arabic.
Upon the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, there was hope among the Kurds that they would be able to form their own country. This, in fact, appeared to be amenable to the European powers, and the Treaty of Sevres (1920) did recognize the need for the demarcation of Kurdistan. However, the borders were never determined and later negotiations between Turkey and the European powers eliminated a viable plan, in favor of Turkey obtaining more territory in the east.
There is, in fact, a Kurdish-dominated area today, called Iraqi Kurdistan. It existed in theory from the 1970’s, but received full autonomy in 1991 after the Persian Gulf War, protected by the UN.
Today is our wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we go out for cake at a place with a live Kurdish band. Music is integral to Kurdish culture, with some historical stories related by song.
