DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — In his 1853 travelogue about Diyarbakir, German orientalist Julius Heinrich Petermann described how he reached the city after sunset to find the fortress gates locked and had to wait for the morning to enter the city. More than 160 years later, those waiting at the gates of the old walled city — now Diyarbakir’s district of Sur — are its own Kurdish residents, forced out from their homes amid clashes between the Turkish security forces and armed militants entrenched in residential areas.

On a cold winter day last week, dozens of people — refugees in their own city — waited at the checkpoint at the entrance of Sur, desperate to be let in to take a few belongings from their homes, since they had fled with only the clothes on their backs. The police would not budge, leading one resident to exclaim, “We’ve sheltered the Syrians, but who is going to shelter us?”

Five neighborhoods in Sur have been sealed off under a round-the-clock curfew for almost two months as the police and the army battle militants of the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), the youth wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The rebels have been holding out behind trenches and barricades in narrow residential streets, often planted with explosives and booby traps.

On Jan. 27, the scope of the curfew was extended to six other neighborhoods, where YDG-H militants were found to be holed up. Residents were ordered to evacuate their homes — some by the police, others by the YDG-H — but the sound of gunfire rang out before they were able to leave. The civilians’ flight from the area was a run for their lives.