"Had the civilization here dated back 70,000 years instead of 7,000, the same thing would have happened," said Serefhan Aydin, the president of the Chamber of Architects in Diyarbakir. Aydin looked resigned as he gazed around the ancient town that resembled a building site.

Aydin is one of the many locals who lament the brutal urban transformation plan for Diyarbakir’s ancient heart, the area known as Sur, which literally means “fortress walls” in Turkish. The fortress and Hevsel Gardens Cultural Landscape was placed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in June 2015. The fortified city was an important cultural center and regional capital during the Hellenistic, Roman, Sassanid and Byzantine times, through the Islamic and Ottoman periods to the present, according to its description on the UNESCO website.

The inscriptions and figures of animals and flowers on Sur's long walls carry the marks of those different civilizations. Well into the 21st century, the Sur area continued to be a lively neighborhood, with large families living in its two-story houses with courtyards and mulberry trees.

The beginning of the end came in 2015, when Sur became the scene of fighting between the Turkish security forces and the urban arm of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party. Gun and cannon fire destroyed most of the houses between the city walls.