In this paper I intend to focus on the symbolical value of the city of Diyarbakir/Amed in Kurdish culture. In particular, I look at how the city is mobilized in Kurdish literature as a symbol of resistance. A growing scholarship has recently showed how, at the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the State produced specific policies to “Turkify” Diyarbakir, a city barely adaptable to Turkish national values, (Çaglayan, 2014; Jongerden, 2007; Üngör, 2012). Echoing the spatial narrative emanating from the capital city, Ankara, the urban space in Diyarbakir had to be transformed according to the Kemalist values, (Houston, 2005). Accordingly Turkish literature, in the works of author such as Gökalp, Adıvar and Karaosmanoğlu, used the city as a symbol of the shortcomings of the Kemalist revolution. In their representations, Diyarbakir is a place calling for further turkification efforts, since, with the words of Karaosmanoğlu, “not even the letter R of the word Revolution has reached Diyarbakir” (Karaosmanoğlu, 1987). Nonetheless, in the last decades of the Twentieth century a significant cultural process of decolonization took place: the political, spatial and cultural transformation of the city from “Diyarbakir” into “Amed”, namely the capital city of Kurdish resistance in Turkey, (Dorronsoro and Watts, 2009; Gambetti, 2010; Gambetti and Jongerden, 2011). In this transformation, literature written in Kurdish and Turkish language –and often echoed by popular music–, played an important role. Literature constituted a sort of “free-space” where Kurds could imaginatively question and counter the Turkish hegemonic narratives about the city. In this context Kurdish contemporary literature has been defined as a literature of resistance, (Scalbert-Yücel, 2013). Furthermore, portraying the city as a bastion of resistance and struggle, inspired policies of urban transformation and re-symbolization by local Kurdish municipalities, (Watts, 2010). In the work of authors such as Ahmed Arif, Mehmed Uzun, Rojen Barnas, and others, Diyarbakir is represented as a castle of resistance of Kurdish culture and identity vis-a–vis the Turkish assimilative policies. In the last decades, in which Kurdish language publishing has seen a significant resurgence, poems, short stories and novels that celebrate the city are uncountable (see Akyol, 2014; Arif, 2014; Barnas, 2013; Galip, 2015; Uzun, 2005, among others). Bringing together examples from Kurdish and Turkish literature, in this paper I will analyze the literary image of the city and the ways in which the latter inspired practices of resistance and opposition to the State.