Diyarbakir

   Diyarbakir is often called the unofficial capital of Turkish Kurdistan. Its Kurdish name is Amed. The city boasts an ancient Byzantine wall of black basalt constructed by the Emperor Constantius in 349 and still well preserved. In January 2000, Mesut Yilmaz, a former Turkish prime minister and at that time a member of the coalition government, famously declared that "the road to the EU European Union passes through Diyarbakir." By this he meant that Turkey would be admitted into the EU only if it successfully solved its Kurdish problem in a democratic manner. In recent years the city's population has swelled to well over 1,000,000 due to the dislocations from the war against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Since 2004, Osman Baydemir, a dynamic young ethnic Kurdish leader, has been the mayor of Diyarbakir. He was reelected to that post in the local elections of March 2009.