Recursive function calls in C cause unwanted modifications on external variables

Question

This function is supposed to delete all the contents of a folder in Linux, using Linux system calls (stat, readdir, unlink, rmdir, etc.).

It takes the path of a folder as a parameter, and it runs as expected when you call it on a folder that has files or empty folders.

If the target folder contains a subfolder, my function recursively makes another call to itself with that subfolder as the target parameter. This is done to empty all the subfolders before rmdir'ing them - since rmdir() cannot unlink a folder unless it is empty.

However, the recursion aspect does not work. It does delete files in subfolders, but not subfolders themselves.

Possible cause: As the recursion unwinds, the value of itemPath (which I believe should be local to the calling function instance) is altered by the recursive call and changed to the value of itemPath that I thought should be unique to the recursive function instance.

I suspect that I'm misunderstanding something about how C allocates new variables during recursive calls, but I can't figure out how to fix this.

Example run: Debug output

Note that the value of itemPath has changed between "beginning recursive call" and "end of recursion".

Example run is on this directory structure:

/tmp/testPopd/      <--- target parameter for test
/tmp/testPopd/file
/tmp/testPopd/dir/
/tmp/testPopd/dir/subfile
/tmp/testPopd/dir/subdir/

Code:

void deleteContents(const char* targetDir)
{
    printf("func called with %s as parameter\n", targetDir);
    
    // Oper targetDir
    DIR* targetDirstream = opendir(targetDir);
    struct dirent* targetDirent;

    // This loop scans across all items in targetDir
    int numEntries = 0;
    while( ((targetDirent = readdir(targetDirstream)) != NULL) ) 
    {
        // Ensure that we do not delete the first 2 dir entries (. and ..)
        numEntries++;
        if (numEntries <= 2)
            continue;

        // Assemble the directory path and the filename into the full path for the item
        char* itemPath;
        strcpy(itemPath, targetDir);
        strcat(itemPath, "/");
        strcat(itemPath, targetDirent->d_name);

        // Determine if the item is a directory, in order to apply correct system call
        struct stat itemStat;
        stat(itemPath, &itemStat);

        if (S_ISDIR(itemStat.st_mode))      // Item is a directory, recur and remove using rmdir()
        {
            printf("beginning recursive call, var itemPath is %s \n", itemPath);

            // Recur into subfolder to ensure it is empty
            deleteContents(itemPath);
            
            printf("end of recursion, var itemPath is %s \n", itemPath);

            rmdir(itemPath);            
        }
        else                                // Item is a file, remove using unlink()
        {
            printf("deleting file %s \n", itemPath);
            
            unlink(itemPath);
        }
    }

    closedir(targetDirstream);
}