The Walls and Gates of Old Diyarbakir: a Brief Introduction

For those who are interested in a visit to Diyarbakir but are not sure of what to expect, here is a brief introduction to the Old Walls and Old City Gates of Diyarbakir.

First of all, I want to dispel the myth that one could see the Tigris while standing on the top of the wall. Wrong. It depends on which section of the City Walls you are standing on top of. One cannot see the Tigris while standing on the section of the City Wall next to Dag Kapi or the Urfa Gate. The only place where the sighting of the Tigris from the top of the wall is possible is the section on the Tigris' side, right next to the Mardin Kapisi. But even then, do not expect to come face to face with a mighty Tigris; most of the time, the Tigris that flows past the city of Diyarbakir is just a small stream, if not a trickle; and those who come to Diyarbakir expecting to see a huge river would inevitably go home disappointed. 

The black basalt stone City Walls of Diyarbakir is about 6km in length, many of which are still standing and more or less 'intact', but - and this is a great 'but' - do not expect to see a well-maintained and tidy city wall such as the one in Avila, Spain, or in Carcassonne, France. Instead, be braced for lots of broken walls here and there, voids that serve as the local rubbish heap, watch-towers that border on the fringe of collapse, and plenty of urban slums right next to the gates of the city walls.

The objective of this article is not to discourage travellers from visiting Diyarbakir; rather the aim is to let potential travellers to Diyarbakir know beforehand how things look like in reality at the moment, so that they would not be misled by irrealistic descriptions found in most travel guidebooks and blog entries.

Of all the gates of Diyarbakir's Old City Walls, the most famous of which are the Mardin Gate, Dag Kapi, and the Urfa Gate. Of these three, the section close to Dag Kapi is probably the most intact, most tidy, and best preserved of them all. Those next to the Urfa Gate and the Mardin Gate are in a more sorry state of disrepair, with parts of the stairs leading up to the top of the wall missing or crumbling, and the interiors of the ramparts turn into local rubbish dump or worse. Some of the towers are either already in ruins, or are in the process of becoming so.

While some visitors might be put off at the sight of this apparent lack of maintenance, and a few of them even go on to openly declare their dislike of the state of affairs concerning the restoration and preservation of the old city walls in Diyarbakir, I wonder exactly how many of them have really looked beyond the surface and give it some deeper thoughts as to why this city on the Tigris, with a long history that dates back thousands of years, finds itself in such a precarious state, unable to fund the restoration and proper conservation of its unique cultural heritage. If one takes into consideration the chronic shortage of funds facing Diyarbakir's municipal authorities, the bureaucratic red tapes put up by the central government with regard to the provision of regional development funds earmarked for Southeast Anatolia, and the problem of high unemployment facing the residents of Diyarbakir since the 1990s, it is actually quite astonishing how much of its cultural trasures the city of Diyarbakir has managed to keep intact despite its very stretched and limited resources.

One thing which all visitors should bear in mind when planning their visit to Diyarbakir is, this city is a living historical city constantly evolving and creating new histories everyday, with millions of ordinary people working and living there, not a tourist-only museum city where only ancient monuments exist. Hence one should not come to Diyarbakir full of unrealistic expectations of a picture-perfect, Disneyland-like medieval city. Be prepared for the real cultural shock to see huge traffic jams in front of old kervansaray; hawkers and foodside foodstalls selling fruits and other local delicacies co-existing side by side with ancient city gates with inscriptions dating back thousands of years. And of course, do not be surprised to see all the slums, with doors and roofs made of corrugated iron sheets and children playing on the mud streets full of litter, only a few steps away from the city's ancient basalt city walls. Not to mention the streets of its old town, full of rundown buildings, dirty streets and poorly-equipped schools surrounded by barbed wires that make the place looks more like a prison than a school. Because regardless of whether one likes these images or not, these sights are the modern and genuine face of Diyarbakir, a city of more than a million souls, a city which, forced by circumstances beyond its residents' control, is doing its best to cope with the problems brought about by years of political unrest and lack of financial resources, and is still trying really hard to hang on to its own heritage.

Once you are in Diyarbakir, try not to measure this city against the yardsticks of some much better funded 'museum-citie' patronised by large numbers of foreign tourists every year, and try to forget about everything written in the guidebooks or in the newspapers, try to look beyond the surface, and seek out possible alternative explanations for everything you see, instead of jumping to easy conclusions. By doing so, one will be rewarded with unexpected discoveries and new encounters, and get so much more out of their visit to this amazing city on the Tigris than previously thought possible.

Copyrights@2012. All text and photos by YC Cheng. All Rights Reserved.