Syria issued a conservative new dress code Tuesday requiring women to wear burkinis or full-body swimwear on all public beaches, the latest cultural shift since Islamist-led rebels toppled dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime last December.
The Tourism Ministry said the new guidelines were made in “the requirements of public interest.”
“Visitors to public beaches and pools, whether tourists or locals, are required to wear appropriate swimwear that takes into account public taste and the sensibilities of various segments of society,” Tourism Minister Mazen al-Salhani said in a directive posted to Facebook.
Well any hope for the new government to be reasonable went right out the window.
It was never going to be a liberal government. The rule is conservative dreck, make no mistake, but the norm was already for burkinis and other such swimsuits to be worn. It’s not a radical departure from extant behavior.
My concern, going forward, is more towards whether the government will resolve itself in a reasonably democratic way.
I’m not holding out hopes for a Tunisia, but a Jordan or Lebanon might be reasonable to cross one’s fingers for.
Never thought I’d see Tunisia mentioned as a beacon of democracy and/or progressiveness. It’s just as oppressive there, just in the opposite direction. People are getting harrassed by police for going to friday prayers. Establishments seat you in the back for wearing headscarves, if you even get to enter. Source: got family there
I mean I wouldn’t call it a beacon of democracy, but all things are relative. I picked one of the more reasonable polities in MENA with a mostly-functioning multiparty system. The alternative would’ve been saying I hoped for Turkiye, but, uh, considering Erdogan’s behavior, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make that comparison as a positive.
My point is simply that there is still hope for Syria to improve into something better than it was - and certainly better than some immensely calcified repressive regime like Iran or the Saudis, and that this… immensely distasteful conservative dreck does not necessarily sink that hope.
We look for Syria to take a step forward, not to become Sweden in a decade (though that would, obviously, also be immensely welcome; just less likely). Institutions are built a year at a time, a battle at a time, not all once.
Not that it matters that much anyway, HTS is essentially a joint puppet project by Turkey and the USA.
As long as whoever is in charge follows their geopolitical demands, they really won’t care how they handle the internal country.
Still at least it’s a significant upgrade from Assad. Anyone would take this over chemical weapon civil war again.
We used to have considerably-more-restrictive rules on women’s swimwear ourselves in the US, not that long ago.
https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/08/11/430035360/sands-of-time-beach-etiquette-of-long-ago
Dude’s backed by trump, Erdogan and Saudis, did you expect him to be liberal?