Arab and Turkish nationalist historiographies usually blame one another for betraying the ideals of the empire during World War I: Turkish historiography focuses on the Arab ‘collaboration’ with enemy states, Arab secret societies and the Arab revolt. Arab historiography emphasizes the so-called ‘Turkification’ of the empire, Cemal Pasha’s policy of public executions of Arab intellectuals and his so-called policy of ‘starving’ off Lebanon during the war. Based on petitions submitted to the Sultan, transcripts of the military court, the Diwan al-Harb, and other sources, this paper offers an alternative to the finger pointing. We learn from the diary of Nasri Bik Lahhud al-Labki from Lebanon, for instance, that many of the judges of the Diwan al-Harb were Arab! Thus you had Arab judges sentencing Arab ‘nationalists’ to public execution. So, too, was much of rank of file of Cemal Pasha’s administration Arab. Similarly, the vast majority of the foot soldiers who served in Greater Syria were also Arab, and we know from a host of sources that they pillaged and plundered from the local population almost at will throughout the duration of the war. I further suggest in this paper that events and behavior often attributed to nationalism resulted, in fact, from other factors. Instead of studying the war in terms of the ‘Arab’ versus ‘Turk’ conflict, I examine moments in which a ‘pro-regime and anti-regime’ analytical framework make much more sense – since there were plenty of Turks and Arabs falling on both sides of the spectrum during the war. Even if they were not represented at the highest echelons of power, many, perhaps most Arabs, still believed in the empire’s existence until the very end of the war, even if they were unhappy about its actions. Indeed, they were the regime in Syria; they worked in its offices and courts, bore its uniform and died in its defense until its final days.