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).

There is an elected Kurdistan parliament. Even during the reign of Saddam Hussein, after 1974 Erbil was the center of autonomous Kurdistan. The town of Sulaimaniyah has always been recognized as the “cultural center” of Kurdistan. Adding Kirkuk to the KRG’s domain is Iraq’s seemingly insurmountable Kurdish problem and a most burning issue. But none of these cities could replace Diyarbakir, which in every Kurd’s perception is their capital, morally and politically.

This characteristic of Diyarbakir has been tacitly recognized even by the Turks, who are usually most extreme in rejecting Kurdish identity. A former prime minister, Mesut Yilmaz, once said: “For Turkey, the route to the European Union passes through Diyarbakir.” That sentence became the motto of Turkey’s Kurdish issue in the beginning of the 2000s. It also added to the dignity of the people of Diyarbakir.