UNESCO black basalt walls, Kurdish cultural heart, and Tigris watermelons
Diyarbakır is the cultural capital of the Kurdish heartland in southeastern Turkey, encircled by nearly 6km of black basalt walls built by the Romans and expanded by the Byzantines, Artuqids, and Ottomans — a UNESCO World Heritage Site alongside the Hevsel Gardens they protect. The old city within is a maze of Armenian, Syrian Christian, and Kurdish architecture: the 10th-century Great Mosque (Ulu Camii), the Armenian Surp Giragos Church (restored after its 2015 destruction), and the bazaar lanes of the Bedesten. The city's watermelons — grown in the Tigris floodplain — are famous across Turk…
Diyarbakır has been inhabited since at least the Bronze Age and was an important Assyrian and then Roman stronghold (the Latin name Amida). The Artuqid Turkmens who controlled it from 1098 CE built much of what survives, including the distinctive black basalt tower gates. The city was a major centre of the Armenian Apostolic church for centuries before the 1915 massacres devastated its non-Muslim population. Today it is Turkey's most Kurdish city and a focal point of debates about minority cultural rights.