The Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), formerly known as the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), is an oil company that had a virtual monopoly on all oil exploration and production in Iraq between 1925 and 1961. It is jointly owned by some of the world's largest oil companies and headquartered in London, England. However, today it is only a paper entity with historical rights and plays no part in the modern development of Middle Eastern oil.

The Baghdad railway, also known as the Berlin–Baghdad railway, was started in 1903 to connect Berlin with the then Ottoman city of Baghdad, from where the Germans wanted to establish a port on the Persian Gulf, with a 1,600-kilometre (1,000 mi) line through modern-day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.