1970’s

The 1970s were a pivotal decade for the Kurdish people—marked by fragile political gains, renewed betrayals, and a deepening commitment to cultural expression and armed struggle. In Iraq, the 1970 Autonomy Agreement between the Ba'athist regime and Kurdish leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani promised limited self-rule in Kurdish-majority areas, leading to a brief period of political optimism. However, the agreement was never fully implemented, and tensions resurfaced. By 1975, the Algiers Agreement between Iraq and Iran led to Iran cutting support for the Kurdish resistance, resulting in the collapse of the Kurdish revolt and a mass displacement of Kurds. In the wake of this betrayal, women began to play more visible roles in rebuilding Kurdish society, organizing refugee life, and preserving language and tradition in exile. In Turkey, the decade saw the emergence of a new generation of Kurdish leftist movements, many of them clandestine, as state repression intensified and Kurdish identity remained criminalized. The seeds of later feminist and militant movements were sown in this period, as Kurdish women in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria quietly entered political circles, literacy programs, and nationalist movements. Meanwhile, the Kurdish diaspora in Europe began to grow—especially in Germany, Sweden, and France—giving rise to Kurdish-language publications, women’s organizations, and cultural festivals. Across the region, the 1970s witnessed the strengthening of Kurdish women’s presence in intellectual and revolutionary spaces, often undocumented but deeply influential. Archival images from this decade reveal a people balancing between loss and possibility—where women appear not only as keepers of cultural memory and social cohesion, but as emerging agents of resistance, knowledge, and continuity.