The Ottoman Empire underwent a process of centralization as a part of its modernization endeavors throughout the nineteenth century. From the perspective of the Ottoman center in Istanbul and provincial capitals, like Baghdad, the reforms of the Tanzimat Era were a way to bring the periphery closer to the center. The rise to power of the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) in 1908 continued this centralizing trend. The discourse of centralization, which politicized its medium, Ottoman Turkish, mirrored the asymmetrical power dynamic emanating from Istanbul toward the Arab provinces. During the same time, the Ottoman state embraced the ideology of Ottomanism as a patriotic and pragmatic project. Though Ottomanism could not prevent the empire’s collapse at the end of WWI, Ottoman patriotism was inculcated successfully among intellectuals across the empire, including the Iraqi provinces. The intellectuals who feature in this paper were caught between the centralization impulse from the Ottoman state and fidelity to the localist sentiments of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra. By writing political Arabic poetry, participating in the Ottoman parliament in Istanbul in 1908 and 1912, and operating the bilingual private press, one can see how these Ottoman Arabic-speaking intellectuals carved discursive spaces that assented to the Ottomanist project, while defending a distinct cultural localism. Unable to conceive of a future without the Ottoman Empire, these Ottoman-Iraqi intellectuals imagined a better empire. The defeat in WWI eclipsed the possible Ottoman-Arab future, and the new day broke with the British Mandate and the Iraqi Hashimite Monarchy. In this paper, I address these imperial imaginings. One focus of this project is the collected works (diwans) of Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi and Ma‘ruf al-Rusafi as their poetic voices engage with and critique the Ottoman state policies. I explore what it meant for Iraqis, like Zahawi, Rusafi, and also Sulayman Faydi, to serve as Ottoman parliamentarians. I also look at the bilingual private press in Iraq, Faydi’s own Basrawi reformist journal al-Iqaz (“Reveille”), and their contributions to Iraqi regionalism. Finally, I assess the role of language itself as a factor in the relationship of these intellectuals to Istanbul, and vice-versa. I propose the concept of an Arab Iraqi lingua-regionalist identity within the larger Ottoman political space. Accommodating centralization was more than just a push-pull. There were many voices, many actions and reactions, and many tongues.