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Comment by quotz | Hacker News Reader

Actually, most of Western opinion about Iran is misguided and plain wrong. Iran is really not as terrible as all the propaganda about it. In fact its quite much like Turkey, except the politicians are better and its not as corrupt.

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Iran bans females from attending sports events and imposes mandatory hijab (e.g. [0]), Turkey does not.

You can oppose Western policy if you like, but lets talk about the country's policies as they really are.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/iranian-female...

Is Turkey really that much progressive than Iran ?

Turkey is quite connected to Germany even though many don't want to admit that, so I would agree that, superficially at least, it looks more western-ish.

But IIRC a couple of years ago there was a coup attempt in Turkey, lots of journalists, academics, judges, etc. were instantaneously thrown into jail, etc. So I'm unsure how much of that "western-look" that Turkey has is real and how much is just a facade. Is there democracy in Turkey? Is there freedom of opinion? Freedom of press? Religious freedom?

I'm not arguing whether Iran is better or worse, and I'm not suggesting that we should only measure both countries in, e.g., LGBT rights, but while Turkey might not be exactly Iran, I actually put closer to Iran than to its Greek neighbor in the "progressive" scale.

Turkey is getting worse and worse, but there's still no outright overt enforcement of religious norms and a secular opposition is still allowed to run in meaningful elections. Closer to Iran than Greece? hmm.. sure. But it's not there just yet.

In terms of Greece’s liberal progressive spectrum, in fact, the tradition of a newly wed bride’s father gifting the groom a house/apt is still a thing. I know because I am from the Balkans. As much as you think that Greece is progressive, its actually not, in the western sense of the word. Also, I dont really believe that one can have an individual’s opinion of progressiveness, or whether ones left wing or right wing, I believe that most things people believe in are there because of their herd mentality, and of course theres the wealthy and powerful people who are trying to keep the citizens in a status quo. Chomsky has a great book on this. Also, I believe it was Napoleon who said “Religion is why the poor havent murdered the rich yet”

Iran requires headscarves. Turkey has banned them. Both are somewhat oppressive, in that respect, but dress codes are a trivial matter compared to things like freedom of speech. I'd rather not get distracted by them.

East Germany allowed total nudity on the beach (and also didn't ban burkinis, as far as I know, unlike certain countries that claim to believe in Liberté). Was East Germany less oppressive than the UK?

It hasn't been quite 100 years since women got the vote in the USA.. Women's rights are the way up in Iran.

I think the implicit comparison here is to Israel and Saudi Arabia. The later of which our leadership seems to have nothing but good things to say even after 9/11, Khashoggi, and Yemen(with weapons from us).

Women's rights are on the way up in Iran? Perhaps, I can't recall any basis for it. Maybe this will happen in the long term, but that's almost an empty statement.

Now, condemning SA is perfectly justified. But 'look over there' isn't a helpful argument re: Iran. It sounds like the same hypocrisy the US government does, except the US government at least has some foreign policy justification for it (Iran being more powerful and more hostile to US), while commenters are just being contrarian.

> Iran bans females from attending sports events and imposes mandatory hijab

But would that really be that terrible in the grad scheme of things? Would you not wear a mandatory hat and renounce on sport events if everything else was faily good? This only seems like massive oppression from our privileged western view.

How is being forced to wear specific clothing and being banned from certain areas for no reason other than your gender _not_ massive oppression? It's literally taking away your ability to decide for yourself as a human being.

And yes, I'm a privileged westerner, but that doesn't exactly seem relevant.

Would you rather live in a politically and financially unstable country were you are free to do whatever you want. Or were you are forced to wear specific type of clothes but society is wealthy and stable?

Seeing as how the average Iranian is neither wealthy nor in a politically stable environment, I'd have to disagree with the argument as a whole. Reducing the treatment of women under Islamic law to "wearing specific clothes" is also incredibly misleading.

Theyre not financially stable, but politically intracountrywise, they are. Theyre not diplomatically stable with the west because Saudi oil is competing with Iran oil, and Saudi pays their debts in big lobbying and massive weapon buying from the west. But socially speaking, the country is very stable. Their culture is as strong as it has always been. They really dont have any social frictions. I would say the US has big social frictions, like the massive false allegation cases where men lose their whole careers over made up stuff...

I actually fairly agree with your point on this. Its really not as bad as people make it seem to be

Saudi Arabia is way worse than Iran in terms of womens rights, but nobody cares because theres no propaganda against them... US foreign policy is like the most hypocritical agenda ever conceived. China is communist, but they dont care since theyre making money off China, while the Soviets communism was a target of propaganda all the time. Also, just to add, Iran was very liberal until 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, and he only came to power because the Shah raised oil prices and the Americans approved of Khomeini coming back to Iran.

For Iranian Women it is not allowed to ride a Bicycle in Public.

"and its not as corrupt." -- au contraire!

When you go there as a tourist, you will generally encounter zero corruption.

...and the Hezbollah is a peaceful club of intellectuals organising protestation sittings. And the Guardians of the Revolution were driving through the crowd with sticks to keep the protesters safe.

In some sense, the IRA was not anyhow different than Hezbollah, but look how infamous Hezbollah is. Its really just a paramilitary unit trying to balance the overpowered israel and saudi in the region. Its lebanons only defence, because the west bribes them very very often. In fact in the Balkans, my friends dad is a very very high ranking politician whos currently in power, and I for a fact know that he has made a lots of business deals with western officials, which in fact has made the country now leaning to the west instead of the east

Turkey by Western standards is not heaven either ;-) While I agree that are a lot of myths and false assumptions about Iran.

Well technically they are still in the process of joining the EU...

Theoretically yes, practically nothing is happening:

"Since 2016 accession negotiations have stalled.[7] The EU has accused and criticized Turkey for human rights violations and deficits in rule of law.[8] In 2017, EU officials expressed that planned Turkish policies violate the Copenhagen criteria of eligibility for an EU membership.[9] On 26 June 2018, the EU's General Affairs Council stated that "the Council notes that Turkey has been moving further away from the European Union. Turkey’s accession negotiations have therefore effectively come to a standstill and no further chapters can be considered for opening or closing and no further work towards the modernisation of the EU-Turkey Customs Union is foreseen."[10][11]"

"20 February 2019 - EU parliament committee votes to suspend accession talks with Turkey."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_Eur...

I've never believed that will never actually happen. For all of turkeys public relations efforts pushing their euro identify, European countries don't care for the Turks, don't identify with them culturally, and will never allow it. Erdogan doesn't help their cause either, obviously.

Agree.

It appears like any other Islamic country, street life is as 'normal' as it maybe in Dubai or Pakistan or Egypt.

Dec 2018: Iran's Got Street Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJKL1Py_gEw

I see your point, but I also feel like Turkey is a very low bar to jump over. Hardly a ringing endorsement to claim a country is as good as Turkey, a country with a ruling party that seems to have little interest in democracy, and firm control over the media, elections, and the judiciary.

You should blog about it and demonstrate how nice it is like this couple.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-49670973

"Our biggest motivation... is to hopefully inspire anyone wanting to travel, and also try to break the stigma around travelling to countries which get a bad wrap [sic] in the media,"

Flying a drone in Iran as a foreigner is a pretty stupid thing to do. Especially near a military area. An as a foreigner you wouldn't know where that is - so they really shouldn't have done it. I say this as an Australian too - I've travelled a lot as well and you have to use a bit of common sense when in countries like Iran. Saying that I do wish for their safe release of course.

You would have problems in any country if you go around taking photos close to military areas. Even here in Sweden.

Assuming the claim of them flying drones is true, they’re pretty lucky.

I think if there were Iranians flying drones near a US military base, prison would be an upgrade from whatever treatment they’d get.

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