As part of the Management Plan Update Process being carried out to protect the Diyarbakır Fortress and Hevsel Gardens Cultural Landscape, pass it on to future generations and manage it through an integrated approach in line with UNESCO World Heritage criteria, the City Council held an information meeting at the Çand Amed Culture and Congress Centre. The meeting was attended by Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Co-Mayor Serra Bucak, district municipality co-mayors, DBB Secretary General Serdar Bakıroğlu, Deputy Chief Executive Muhabbet Erdoğmuş, academics, City Council members and residents.

Speaking at the meeting, Co-Mayor Bucak highlighted the importance of participation, transparency and elected local government in safeguarding the city’s values:

“Everything has its own course, and politics has its own course too. The most essential features of that political process are participation and transparency. It is about conducting these processes in a participatory, people-centred way. Above all, it is about elected representation. Elected local government has a responsibility towards all the values of this city. It is about building and strengthening this network together and bringing it to where it is today. We were deprived of this for a long time.”

‘The natural course was disrupted, and the site was stripped of authority’

Referring to the period following 2016, Co-Mayor Bucak described the interruptions to the authority and management mechanisms relating to the Site Management Presidency:

“In 2016, following the appointment of trustees and the period of conflict, Sur was effectively stripped of all authority, and the Site Management Presidency was taken away from Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality. As a result, for a long time it was not even possible to determine who the Site Management Presidency would be assigned to.

“I say ‘it was not possible to determine’ because protecting a site can only happen when local government representatives, local institutions, local activists and civil society come together around a shared understanding and act collectively. When that natural course is disrupted, we face a situation much like a river whose natural flow has been disturbed. It is as though the course of a natural process has been diverted.”

‘An up-to-date plan could not be prepared because there was no elected local government’

Highlighting the site’s World Heritage value and the need to update its management plan, Co-Mayor Bucak pointed to the absence of elected local government as the reason why the work scheduled for 2020 could not be carried out. Co-Mayor Bucak said:

“Ultimately, this is a UNESCO World Heritage site. What does that mean? This is not just a value belonging to Diyarbakır, Amed or Mesopotamia. It is a value belonging to the whole world. It is World Heritage, as the name itself says.

“But unfortunately, the relationship UNESCO has established with states, the way that relationship is structured, its rigidity and its lack of a horizontal character, together with all the things that are overlooked in the details, have brought us to where we are today.

“When this site management plan was prepared in 2015, it said that ‘the site management plan would be revised five years later’. Once you have placed this site on the World Heritage List, it becomes the heritage of the whole world. That means that five years later you need an up-to-date plan covering everything from the buildings on the site to the river and Hevsel, including all matters concerning local governments and institutions, our Provincial Directorate of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change and our Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism.

“Yes, dear friends, that updated plan could not be prepared. Everyone in this room knows why. It should have been done in 2020. It could not be done because there was no elected government or elected local will here.”

‘It is important for the city’s elected will to take ownership of this issue’

Co-Mayor Bucak outlined the timetable for the work launched after taking office and said the process could have begun earlier. Saying that work on the site began in June, Co-Mayor Bucak stressed the need to determine the roles that institutions will undertake in implementing the plan to be prepared:

“Five more years passed after 2020, and here we are in 2025. We had taken office by then; we received our certificates of election in April 2024. Of course, it was not easy to adapt to everything that had happened before we came into office. I will also offer some self-criticism here: I think we were late. We should have started earlier. We could have begun this process towards the end of 2024. But at the stage we reached, we completed our preparations in May this year.

“In June, our professor and his team began working on the site, and today we have come together to present their work here, in front of you.

“As all the different components of this city, and as its local governments, we failed to take ownership of this site. We failed to take ownership of the issue that has continued since 2015. There are many reasons for this, many explanations, but when those explanations multiply and are listed one after another, it becomes very difficult to find a way forward. We experienced that difficulty ourselves for a period.

“Nevertheless, as Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality, we knew that we needed to take responsibility for this issue, and we launched this work.

“This work will not, of course, bring the process to an end. What really matters, beyond the site management plan that is produced as a result of this work, is for the will of this city and all its institutions to take ownership of this issue through participation.

“Beyond what is written in the report, its findings and the extent of the damage to the site, the important questions from this point onwards are: Who will play what role, and where? Who will take responsibility, and how? How will local governments intervene in development on the site? How will they carry out the necessary inspections? And how will they take their dialogue with state institutions forward? I think this is the most important point.”

‘We need an action plan to protect our World Heritage’

Stressing the need to prepare an action plan to protect the site, Co-Mayor Bucak highlighted the importance of talks between local governments and ministries:

“We really need a serious action plan now. First and foremost, local governments and all the different components of this city — everyone who cares about this site and is prepared to take responsibility for it.

“Yes, we have received and read the report, and the damage is extensive. Everyone has a major responsibility when it comes to how we are going to reverse that damage, how we are going to restore the site to its former state, or how we are going to take it forward to a different point from where it was before.

“We have a major responsibility to engage in serious dialogue with all state institutions and ministries. From the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change, we are facing a very important question: are we really going to take ownership of this site? Are we going to do so without anyone turning a blind eye, without anyone pretending that nothing is happening, and without anyone simply saying, ‘There are licences issued in 2018 and 2019; there are buildings’?

“We need to ask what the criteria are for protecting this site, and how we will, together, demonstrate the local and now national will needed to meet those criteria. This is a very important question. It is a question to which we all know the answer. That is precisely the point.

“The time has long come for us to turn genuine cooperation in this city into a real action plan and concrete action to protect this site, protect our World Heritage and finally put a stop to the damage being done to it. In fact, we are already running out of time.”

City Council Co-Chair Serdar Keskin, Head of the Department of Planning and Urban Development Murat Eminoğlu and urban planner Serdar Nizamoğlu also spoke at the meeting.

Participants also put forward their requests and suggestions at the Information Meeting on the Management Plan for the Diyarbakır Fortress and Hevsel Gardens Cultural Landscape.