Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality Co-Mayors Serra Bucak and Emin Ay attended a meeting of the “Diyarbakır Local Services Monitoring Network”, jointly organised by the Dicle Centre for Social Research (DİTAM) and the Diyarbakır City Council. The meeting, held at the Diyarbakır Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DTSO) meeting hall, focused on the participation of civil society actors in local policymaking. Alongside Co-Mayors Serra Bucak and Emin Ay, attendees included City Council Co-Chairs Dilan Aydın and Serdar Keskin, council members, MPs, district municipality co-mayors, academics, activists and representatives of civil society organisations.

Opening the meeting, DİTAM President Mesut Azizoğlu said the project aimed to examine civil society’s participation in Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality’s 2025–2029 strategic planning process, analyse and evaluate the Municipality’s activities in 2025, and ensure effective civil society participation in preparing the Municipality’s 2027 action plan and performance-based budget.

Sustainable Cities Programme

City Council Co-Chair Dilan Aydın thanked the Metropolitan Municipality’s Co-Mayors and district municipality co-mayors for their efforts to establish a participatory approach despite the many challenges involved. She said she believed Diyarbakır would, in the coming years, become part of the Sustainable Cities and Communities programme. Citing Stockholm, Vienna and Copenhagen as important examples in Europe, Aydın said she hoped Diyarbakır would also be recognised among such models in the years ahead.

Co-Mayor Bucak: We Value Civil Society’s Proposals

Speaking at the opening of the meeting, where DİTAM presented its report, Civil Society Proposals for Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality’s 2027 Planning Process, Co-Mayor Serra Bucak said they had gathered to discuss how Diyarbakır’s future could be shaped. She stressed that local government was not simply an institution that built roads, opened parks or laid asphalt, but a space where decisions about the city’s future and planning should be made collectively. For this reason, she said, they attached great importance to the work, criticism and proposals of civil society organisations.

“We Must Develop Rational Solutions”

Emphasising that Diyarbakır was a strong city sustained by its ancient history, cultural diversity, awareness, collective memory and deep-rooted tradition of solidarity, Co-Mayor Bucak also noted that the city faced many long-standing problems.

“We must all seek answers to the question, ‘Why can’t we find solutions where problems have become entrenched?’ We must work together to develop rational solutions to these problems. Of course, the main issues include housing and accommodation, difficulties with transport, the pressures created by unplanned urbanisation, climate change, the needs of rural areas and problems relating to the balance between rural and urban life,” she said.

“We Must Shape the Past, Present and Future Together”

“We cannot address any of these problems in isolation,” Co-Mayor Bucak said, continuing:

“For example, the transport problem cannot be solved simply by building new roads. Nor can it be solved by expanding the bus fleet. It is our responsibility to understand how the city is growing, where people live and work, and the places they travel to from their homes and workplaces to carry out social and community activities. We must observe these patterns and assess them together.

“Likewise, we cannot view urban regeneration merely as replacing existing buildings on the same sites. We must shape the past, present and future together, taking into account the ties people have with their neighbourhoods, their relationships with their neighbours and their shared history.”

“We Have Requested a Meeting on Urban Regeneration”

Co-Mayor Bucak said that every problem faced by residents of Diyarbakır was an issue for which they felt responsible and sought to find solutions. However, she stressed that local authorities did not have all the powers and resources needed to resolve every problem facing cities.

“We have experienced this at first hand. We have lived through this experience for many years, for decades. We have all seen how, in many cases, the central administration, central government and relevant institutions, including institutions within the city, have unfortunately failed to respond adequately to the proposed solutions, offers of cooperation and proposals for consensus put forward by local authorities after identifying problems, determining what needs to be done and presenting solutions they consider essential. All local administrators, civil society organisations and professional chambers have unfortunately faced this reality.

“But of course, we will not stop raising these issues. We will not tire of speaking out. To solve certain problems, we must work together with central government, its relevant institutions and ministries, as well as provincial institutions. We must act together.

“If a representative of a public institution were here today, they would say, ‘We work together; we come together.’ That is true. We meet, work together, discuss the issues and speak about them, but then we disperse. Let me be very clear: they do not feel remorse when they leave, but we do. This is because it also requires a clear division of responsibilities. We say, ‘We are here,’ but on the other side of that division of responsibilities, we see actors who are unfortunately absent or failing to fulfil their roles. This makes our work extremely difficult.

“We have been making representations through our general secretaries to increase the Municipality’s powers in urban regeneration. Our MPs have repeatedly requested meetings with the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change. We are seeking these meetings to explain that urban regeneration cannot be carried out by the metropolitan and district municipalities alone; to present our plans, projects and action plan; and to explain how we operate through a horizontal organisational structure and involve people in decision-making through this approach. We want to tell them how we bring together universities and academic institutions, and to put forward a roadmap for solutions.”

“I Want You to Know That We Also Face Difficulties Accessing Resources”

Co-Mayor Bucak said that delays in decision-making and administrative procedures at central institutions, or the failure even to put these issues on their agenda, were also hindering progress on matters that local authorities were seeking to resolve. She stressed that developing the right projects was not enough to address Diyarbakır’s problems; they also needed the authority, funding and strong inter-institutional cooperation required to put those projects into practice.

Stating that they remained committed to finding solutions despite these conditions and were continuing their discussions and work with all relevant institutions, Co-Mayor Bucak said:

“Transport infrastructure, urban regeneration and large-scale investments require very substantial budgets from us. Naturally, we are seeking these funds and exploring ways to secure them. We also have a responsibility to ensure that central government is properly informed and that we make the right requests. However, I want you to know that we also face difficulties accessing these resources. Both the limits of our authority and financial constraints are significant obstacles to meeting these needs in practice.

“Despite these conditions, as we said at the outset, Diyarbakır, with its ancient culture, history, spirit of struggle and tradition of solidarity, will continue to pursue all these projects and work tirelessly to implement them, at the very least prioritising those that are most urgent.”

Call to Civil Society: “Be an Active Part of This Process”

Co-Mayor Bucak noted that the Municipality was already implementing some of the proposals put forward at the previous meeting.

“Your proposals overlap with the work we are doing. Others are issues that we need to develop further through new policies and practices. Examples include disaster management, building cities that are resilient to disasters, and the measures that Amed Metropolitan Municipality and the district municipalities can take and implement to tackle the climate crisis,” she said.

Calling on civil society organisations to get involved, Co-Mayor Bucak said the city’s future should not be left solely to the Municipality. Professional chambers, universities, civil society organisations, women, young people and all residents of the city needed to play an active part in the process.

She continued:

“For us, participation does not simply mean asking for people’s views and then walking away. I believe we have demonstrated this many times over the past two and a half years. We have not simply attended meetings, gathered opinions and withdrawn. How can we genuinely put these views into practice together, in a truly participatory way? This is where we need a little more support.

“Hearing people’s views is extremely valuable, important and entirely natural in this city. But it is also vital to stand by those views, defend them to the end, face potential conflicts, obstacles and risks together, be part of the process together and make our voices heard collectively. I want to say that this is precisely what the local government approach we seek to develop—a democratic and participatory approach—means in practice.”

The Goal: A Just, Egalitarian and Ecological Diyarbakır

Co-Mayor Bucak said they did not view the 2027 planning process merely as an exercise in preparing a budget. They wanted to use it to reassess the city’s priorities, allocate resources more fairly and effectively, improve accessibility, and identify longer-term goals while bringing long-term investments and objectives into clearer focus.

She said they wanted to strengthen this model through an approach to the city that prioritised the needs of neighbourhoods facing difficulties accessing services, sought to eliminate inequalities between rural and urban areas, and ensured that women, children, young people, older people and disabled residents had equal access to public services.

Co-Mayor Bucak concluded by saying that their goal was not simply a growing Diyarbakır, but an Amed founded on a just, egalitarian and ecological paradigm, with a perspective committed to women’s freedom. She said she believed they could shape Diyarbakır’s future together through shared knowledge, collective effort and joint struggle, adopting an approach that would make governance more participatory, broaden the diversity of participation, and recognise and respond to its finer details.

Following the opening speeches, the meeting continued with sessions entitled “Local Government, Kurdish Municipalism, Peacebuilding After Conflict and the Role of Municipalities”; “Diyarbakır on the Path Towards Sustainable Cities and Communities: Civil Society Proposals for Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality’s 2027 Planning Process”; and “Participatory Budgeting Practices: Varto and Bağlar Municipalities”.