This chapter examines the formation and development of modern Kurdish political activism in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire’s existence. It charts the evolution of the movement through an examination of contemporary documentary evidence, including newspapers, publications and archival materials. Over the course of the period between 1880 and 1923, there was a slow but steady uptick in Kurdish political agitation. However, while growing numbers of Kurdish elites came to see themselves as part of a Kurdish ‘nation’ and began to advocate for Kurdish ‘rights’, there was little consensus on how or within what type of framework those rights might be secured. While some looked towards the creation of an autonomous or even independent Kurdish nation-state as a panacea to the Kurdish question, many early Kurdish intellectuals remained committed to the continuation of the Ottoman state. Indeed, it was only in the aftermath of Ottoman defeat during the First World War that support for Kurdish statehood emerged as the dominant trend within Kurdish intellectual circles. However, ultimately the geopolitical circumstances that came into being with the empire’s collapse served to foreclose nationalist aspirations.