The city of Diyarbakir is not only the largest metropolis of Turkey’s southeast. More importantly it is the center, a kind of “spiritual capital,” of the Kurds, who are called “the largest nation of the world without a state,” scattered over Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
In the recent past, there was an attempt in 1946 at the first independent Kurdish state of Mahabad Republic in Iran. It didn’t last even a year. Today, Erbil in northern Iraq is the capital of quasi-independent Kurdistan. It is, at the very least, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
