Yet the fate of the Kurds has long been one of the central themes in the recent history of the region; one that ignores borders. Kurds in Turkey have been inspired by Kurdish gains in Iraq and Syria, two countries where the Kurds were repressed. Across Turkey’s southeastern border, Kurds run an autonomous zone in northeast Iraq and will hold an independence referendum in September. To Turkey’s south, Syrian Kurds have carved out a territory in northeast Syria and their militias are America’s main partner in the campaign to retake Raqqa, the proclaimed capital of the Islamic State.

And continued successes of those movements will likely further encourage the ambitions of the Turkish Kurds.

Across southeast Turkey, where most people are Kurdish, Mr. Erdogan’s government fired over 80 elected mayors and replaced them with state-appointed trustees. Here in Diyarbakir, the spiritual capital of Turkish Kurdistan, the trustee not only fired most of the city’s municipally employed actors, but also 80 percent of the staff of the municipal department that promoted the teaching of Kurdish and other minority languages.

In towns across the region, trustees have changed the names of streets previously named for prominent Kurdish figures, or removed statues of Kurdish heroes. More than a dozen lawmakers from the main pro-Kurdish party have been arrested in recent months. A Kurdish artist was jailed for doing a painting of the ruins of Nusaybin, one of several Kurdish towns partly destroyed in 2015 during fighting between the Turkish army and Kurdish militants.

Kurdish or pro-Kurdish journalists are some of the principal victims of the post-coup crackdown on free speech. According to the Free Journalist Society, a now-banned, pro-Kurdish news media watchdog, 173 journalists are now in Turkish prisons; of those, 50 worked for Kurdish or pro-Kurdish news outlets.

Turkey’s only Kurdish-language newspaper, Azadiya Welat, was closed last summer — along with at least 10 television channels that broadcast, at least in part, in Kurdish. Even a Kurdish cartoon channel, Zarok TV, was banned for several months before being allowed to reopen in December.