To Diyarbakir

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Scenary during the journey

Arrived at Diyarbakir Yeni Otogar (New bus station) at around 8am.

The bus station is located around 14km west of the city so that’s why I did’t see any city like building. Nobody speaks English here so took a bus towards the east part of town and got off around the old city. A tip of looking for places to get off is to look out for signs of museums or places with a few 3-5 stars hotels. Usually this will be around the city center or places with tourist attractions, budget hotels.

Diyarbakir is considered as the unofficial capital of Kurdistan and is the largest city of Southeastern Turkey. Many people mentioned that the city is not safe and dangerous because of guerilla attacks and separatist movement. The city has around 1.5 million people and is the strong hold of Kurdish separatist movement. Around 90% of the population here is Kurdish and everyone is proud of their Kurdish background and tell me that they are Kurdish and not Turkish. There is a Kurdish looking flag on the public bus.

There are around 30 millions Kurdish in the world but they don’t have a country. The Kurdish people live around southeastern turkey, northern iraq, northeastern syria and northwestern Iraq. They had suffered some atrocities and many were killed during the massacre of Armenians and during Saddam’s rule in Iraq.

There were not many tourist in Diyarbakir so everyone stared at me. Met a guy on the bus and he sort of showed me around but he couldn’t speak English. Approached by 2 guys and they invited me for tea but then they tried to sell me stuffs and I left.

Walked around the old wall, 6km in total

The old city

Since there were no hostel here, I gotta get a room in a hotel. After asking around few hotels,

I checked in into Hotel Ozbal (20 TL single room with shower).

Bazaar

Late lunch at around 3pm, had chickn kebag (6.5 TL)

To get to Northern Iraq, I will need to cross the border at Silopi, Turkey side to Zahuk, Iraq side. Then try to find my way to Dohuk, Northern Iraq 3rd largest city. I read that shared taxi is the only way to get there but since taxi is quite expensive, I found a post mentioned that there is a bus from Cizre to Dohuk, Iraq. Asked around the bus station but no one knows, plus nobody speaks english.

Met a Kurdish friend on the street, Erdol. He is a nice guy, showed me around
Ulu Camii (Grand Mosque) This building was originally a church and it was converted to a mosque.

and treated me for dinner.

He and his friend Suffran worked in US over the summer so they spoke pretty good English. I learned a lot about Kurdish history from them. He has many friends that joined the PKK, which is considered as a terrorist group in the mountains. The military is very powerful in Turkey and has more say that the government. The military doesn’t want to talk to PKK and between 1984 and 1999, the PKK and the Turkish military engaged in open war. Turkey has a compulsory military service so sometimes Kurds joining the military have to fight their own friends and family. However, things are getting better and the government lifted the ban on Kurdish language. However, Kurdish name is still disallowed.

We then went to the new part of the city to visit Mega Center mall

and then had tea. That’s my 5th cup of Kurdish cay (tea) for the day and I didn’t pay for any tea.

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