In 1968, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Aybar adopted a rhetoric hostile to Soviet Communism. However, when TİP failed to increase its votes in the 1969 general election, Aybar resigned from the party leadership in November 1969 and Behice Boran, who had opposed Aybar's anti-Soviet stand, was elected as the first female Turkish party leader. The party was a supporter of the pro-Kurdish Revolutionary Cultural Eastern Hearths (DDKO). During its Party Congress in October 1970, it recognized that in Turkeys east the existed a Kurdish community which had to affront policies of forced assimilation.