The Syrian civil war has brought two violent groups with diametrically opposed worldviews to the forefront of regional and global politics. Notwithstanding complexities involved, the war also witnessed the ascent of a radical Islamist group, the Islamic State, and its military defeat at the hands of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Kurdish forces have become under the spotlight not only for their tenacity and competence against the IS but also for their radically different views of gender equality. While much has been written on the Kurdish forces in Syria, the group from which the Syrian Kurdish group gets its cues and inspiration, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, PKK) in Turkey, and its silent social revolution in the Kurdish parts of Turkey has escaped the world attention due in part to the listing of the PKK as a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union. In this paper, I aim at shedding light on this revolution that has enabled Kurdish women in Turkey to break with patriarchal gender roles and emerge as a key player both in the Kurdish movement and Turkish politics. Today, Kurdish women make up about a third of the PKK guerrilla units, and serve as mayors, parliamentarians, and co-chairs in the Kurdish political movement. This paper examines this phenomenal change with an emphasis on how more than three decades of armed conflict has affected gender norms and relations among the Kurds in Turkey.