The first Kurdish-language newspaper, Kurdistan, was published in Cairo on 22 April 1898 by two exiled brothers Mikdad Midhat Bedirkhan and Abdurrahman Bedirkhan. Between the years of 1898 and 1902, the editors published thirty-one issues. Kurdistan offered its readers as well as its contributors from various opposition groups a forum for the exchange of ideas. The Bedirkhan brothers’ political involvement with the Committee of Union and Progress was reflected in articles published in Kurdistan, which was at times published in the CUP presses and was read by the CUP members. The newspaper carried harsh critiques of the sultan, his policies, and his “corrupt” institutions (mainly, the Hamidian Cavalry, which was at the forefront of repression against Kurds and Armenians), as well as the actions of his “flattering” officials. These criticisms were also conveyed in the form of petitions and open letters addressed directly to the sultan. These petitions underscored the strategic importance of Kurdistan for the empire as a buffer zone between the two “enemy” states of Russia and Iran, and as the heart of the Ottoman Empire. Over time, the writers increased their harsh criticism against the regime to the point where they started to demand the sultan be deposed and a new legal and socio-political order be created. In the meantime, the space Kurdistan offered was turned into a forum in which the contributors advanced their “nationalist” agendas, criticized the “despotic” Hamidian regime, and at the same time worked to advance their own familial interests which had been harmed with the centralizing policies of the Ottoman state. In this way, in the beginning of the twentieth century, the Bedirkhan brothers’ Kurdistan distinguished itself as an oppositional newspaper with a particular Kurdish perspective. This paper is an attempt to analyze the construction of Kurdish oppositional discourse against the Hamidian regime, with particular reference to Kurdistan. Through comparative analysis of the articles written and published by Kurdish Ottoman intellectuals in Kurdistan and in several CUP publications, and through close-reading of the petitions and open-letters, not merely as a way of direct communication to the sultan but rather as a forum in which corruption under the existing regime and the need for change is revealed, this paper discusses the evolution of political rhetoric that Kurdistan employed in order to create an imagined Kurdish constituency which was composed of Kurdish language, history, folklore, legends and folk songs.