1960’s

A Brief Overview…

In 1962, over a 120,000 Kurds in Syria lost their citizenship due to an unjust census, with hundreds of thousands of Kurds from Rojava still suffering the legal repercussions until present day.  In the Iraqi part, celebrating the Kurdish new year’s celebration, Newroz, is punished by the authorities, though often secretly still celebrated in the mountains. Large communities of Kurdish families find themselves, assimilating and juggling their lives in Baghdad, Istanbul, Damascus, and Teheran. Meanwhile, it seems that the national struggle had gotten a heavy defeat, the Kurdish national movement was once again gathering its strength – culminating in the Aylul Revolution from 1961 to 1970 led by General Mustafa Barzani, also known as the first Kurdish-Iraqi Wars. Many Kurds were imprisoned, harassed, or discriminated socio-economically, sometimes only because someone in their family had joined the revolution. Meanwhile, in a greater effort to support the education of the future generation, many Kurdish university students, men, and women, were given scholarships to study abroad, with many becoming members of the Kurdish Student Society of Europe (KSSE) that then took a big role in advocating for the pan-Kurdish human rights cause with foreign governments and political and social interest groups. With things worsening in their home country many though became stranded in exile, creating new lives, nevertheless carrying on the political struggle.