Listening to an Iranian official describe his region as “West Asia” got me wondering if the word “Middle East” is on the outs and why. I suspect Middle East is eurocentric for some reason, but West Asia also preserves Europe as a continent, which is Eurocentric in its own way because Europe is not a continent and never was. If we’re calling anything West Asia, it should be Spain and Portugal.
The answers to your primary and secondary questions: it’s political.
Iran calls itself “west Asia” specifically to be contrarian to the Western vernacular. That, and “middle east” is a Roman thing (as is Asia) and Iranians are still a bit put out by the Persian empire falling to Greece and Rome. Most Iranians identify as Persian and consider Iran a Western political entity they’re stuck with but that doesn’t define them.
You know how there’s people in the southern US that live as though the Confederates never lost and they want to hold on to their history and culture? Persians are much more that way.
Who else advocates for “West Asia”? Is it just Iran?
There was a really insane dude I ran into somewhere on the internet that would just always talk about how great Persia was and was always bringing up the Persian Empire and talking about how Persian armies defeated Rome or Greece (aka The West) in this or that battle–totally out of context–so I know what you’re talking about.
Oh, and the Iranian guy who uses “West Asia”, also refers to “The West,” meaning Europe and the US, so I guess everyone falls into geographical relativitity eventually.
Iranians hold no grudge toward Greece, Rome or Alexander the Great.
Iranians do not identify as Persian first. Iran is home to multipld ethnicities including Fars, Arab, Azeri, Kurd, Turk, Lur, Baluch and more. Normally, members of these groups identify as Iranian first.
In the diaspora it is more common for Iranians to try to distance themselves from Iran, and that is why some tend to emphasize their ethnicity first. That’s would be a really weird thing to do in Iran. What if you met someone who said “I’m a New Yorker, not an American?”
It might be really weird, but it’s what my friends who live in Tehran do. There’s also this odd relationship with Afghani Persians and with non-Persian Iranians.
They’ll still claim Iran as their nation though. I’ve always found it odd, because with most other groups it’s what you’d find with the diaspora, although the Irish in Northern Ireland call themselves Itish, the Welsh call themselves Welsh, the Scottish call themselves Scottish, even though they’re all officially part of the UK — kind of a similar thing here. And like how someone from Georgia US or Kentucky identifies themselves by their state and not their nation first.
Hm, interesting. In my experience, it is much more common for the minority groups to emphasize their ethnicity. Which makes sense, because they speak another language and often have family or even a farm ‘back home’ in some specific region of the country. Persians rarely speak of themselves in those terms.
For Afghani I think the difference comes back to the nation split again - they may be Persian, but they’re not Iranian. (It doesn’t really make sense but that’s how I think a lot of people think about this issue.) They are very much the target of a lot of prejudice as well.