Abstract
This chapter discusses events surrounding the 1936 Bakr Sidqi military coup. On October 29, 1936, planes from the infant Royal Iraqi Air Force circled over Baghdad then dropped leaflets demanding the ouster of nationalist Prime Minister Yasin al-Hashimi, who had taken to characterizing himself as the Bismarck of Iraq. It did not take long for Hashimi to tender his resignation to the young King Ghazi, and along with other senior members of the government, including Nuri al-Sa'id, hurriedly left Iraq. By imposing its will on the political leadership, the army, under the leadership of the notorious, yet at the time popular, Kurdish general Bakr Sidqi had executed a successful military coup, which was to become the precursor for a spate of military coups that bedeviled not only Iraq, but most of the Arab world, over the following four decades. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that in the 1936 military coup could be found the seeds of the momentous events that were to usher the end of the monarchical period in July 1958.