Picking up the rubble in troubled southeast Turkey

After more than three months of urban warfare, Turkish forces are pulling out of Diyarbakir, where they've been trying to eradicate militants linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). On Monday, shopkeepers were seen sweeping up broken glass and reopening stores in areas once held under curfew, but fighting continues in six districts, which remain closed to the public.

The area worst hit by fighting was Sur, a historic district encircled by UNESCO-listed Roman era walls (visible in the center of the photo above). With streets too narrow for armored vehicles, the old city was well-suited for guerilla warfare and provided cover for militants trying to avoid ground and air attacks. Several historic sites were damaged as a result.

Residents are slowly returning to areas where fighting took place and finding a neighborhood damaged beyond repair. Locals estimate heavy artillery rounds have hit more than half of the buildings in Sur. While the complete death count has yet to be confirmed, the Turkish government said it lost 271 soldiers in the battles.

Much of the street fighting has ended in Sur, but gun battles occurred on Monday night and there were seven deaths on Sunday, when PKK-sympathizers were caught inside a collapsed building. As people re-enter the recently opened corridors, they are faced with police checkpoints in and around the Sur district, and tensions remain high as helicopters circle overhead.

Despite recent skirmishes, Turkish forces are winding down operations in Diyarbakir and have pulled out completely from Cizre, Idil, Jilopi and Dargecit. At the same time, they are opening new fronts in other parts of the nation's Kurdish region. This week, new military campaigns began in Yuksekova, Nusaybin and Sirnak.

Political graffiti is as common as bullet holes in Sur. Above, a woman passes a tag referencing Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK, a group formed in the late 1970s to begin an armed struggle against the Turkish state for the expansion of Kurdish rights. At the moment, Kurds remain the largest group of stateless people in the world.

A local teenager holds a bullet that was lodged in the front door of his family's home. Throughout the street battles, Turkish forces used battering rams to enter households in Sur and clear the district of opposition fighters. The teenager, who wanted to remain anonymous, said Turkish forces destroyed homes to punish residents for harboring 'terrorists,' regardless of their affiliations.

Two men push a cart through a lot recently cleared of sandbag trenches and rubble fallen from surrounding buildings. A man in a nearby bakery pointed out two lookouts on opposite corners of the lot. He said one worked for the government, while the other, who was sitting casually on a couch in the street, worked for the PKK.

"Without a stable Turkey, there cannot be a stable Europe or United States and this conflict can become a civil war very easily," said Ramazan Tunc, an advisor for the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), a socialist Kurdish group. "Just think about where the refugees from [a war like this] will go."

Once operations end in Diyarbakir, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the architecture in Sur would be restored to rival that of Toledo, Spain. "Our struggle will continue until public order is brought to every province, every village, every field, every mountain and plain and river on this land," he told Turkish media in February.