The article renders a comparative analysis of the national liberation movement of the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey in the following aspects: the initial conditions of activity, organizational and ideological forms. It concludes that different initial conditions of their activity led to the specifics of both organizational and ideological forms of struggle. The Kurds in Iraq were able to utilize the tribal structure of society as driver of their national movement whilst the traditional aristocracy of the Turkish Kurds was incorporated into the country's ruling elite. As a result, Turkish Kurdish revolutionaries were forced to create fundamentally different forms of organization.