The final Ottoman legacy in Iraq is…

The final Ottoman legacy in Iraq is related to the policies of the Young Turks and to the creation of a small but vocal Iraqi intelligentsia.

Faced with the rapidly encroaching West, the Young Turks attempt to centralize the empire by imposing upon it the Turkish language and culture and by clamping down on newly won political freedoms.

These Turkification policies alienate many of the Ottoman-trained intelligentsia who had originally aligned themselves with the Young Turks in the hope of obtaining greater Arab autonomy.

Despite its relatively small size, the nascent Iraqi intelligentsia forms several secret nationalist societies. The most important of these societies is Al Ahd (the Covenant), whose membership is drawn almost entirely from Iraqi officers in the Ottoman army.

Membership in Al Ahd spreads rapidly in Baghdad and in Mosul, growing to four thousand by the outbreak of the First World War.

Despite the existence of Al Ahd and of other, smaller, nationalist societies, Iraqi nationalism is still mainly the concern of educated Arabs from the upper and the middle classes.