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Thursday 2004-05-20 - Diyarbakır, Turkey
Kurdish capital
The ancient city of Diyarbakır, situated on the banks of the river Tigris and inhabited for over 5000 years, is the Kurdish capital in Turkey. We arrive already at eleven at our hotel within the old city walls after a trip from Mardin through a gradually more green landscape with rugged mountains and some agriculture.
After a short visit to the mosque (essentially closed to us since a prayer service is starting) with market stalls in the courtyard and lots of noise around, we decide to walk along the inside of the city walls on the way to another Christian church. We end up walking through the poorest, and not the most pleasant quarter of town. 90% of inhabitants of Diyarbakır are Kurds, and while Kurds are among the poorest in Turkey, the poorest of them in Diyarbakır live here in tiny houses below the old city wall.
The children are quite irritating, constantly begging for money, grasping your hands and clothes. Apparently more naive tourists have taught them that if you keep asking, ultimately they will give money — just to get rid of you. That’s a good way to create beggars out of children. We try instead to just ignore them but that isn’t all that easy: they also like to jump in front of the camera when you want to make a picture — not to be in the picture, but just to get in the way.
Luckily the grown-ups are mostly friendly, especially after you greet them first. A small group of women is baking bread in an outside oven, and they invite me to have a closer look and take a picture. Farther on, a girl sits in a doorway with her friend crocheting a fringe for a shawl. She’s quite happy for me to take a picture of her. I compliment her friend about her shawl and she tells me its fringe was also made by the other girl who then shows me her samples. Obviously she does this for others who can pick a pattern from the samples, a way to make a little (extra) money. Mother also wants a picture, and a small boy writes down the address.
A young man who’s accompanied us uninvited since the mosque turns out to have a small shop with carpets and jewelry; he invites us for a cup of tea in his shop. On the way, he tells us he’s half Kurdish - something not very common here.
