Will Iran become Turkey?

?I?ll ask you something completely besides politics: Do you think Ayatollah Khomeini was a good person in his heart?? I ask Hamed, a harsh anti-regime academician.

With a sad voice, he replied: ?I don?t know. There is this love letter he wrote to his wife. Your and I could never write with such depth??

Iranians are a different kind.

The great Persian civilization? 

You can?t really understand this civilization in museums. 

You see it on peoples? faces, in their words? 

I stayed in Iran for two weeks with photographer Sebati Karakurt. 

I wrote for Hürriyet for an entire week.

We talked to the government and made friends in wealthy neighborhoods, remote villages. 

The films and songs stuck the spirit of Iran in our hearts.  

As if it is our own country.

People on the street look so much like us; I constantly feel like I?ve seen someone I know!

Two old empires, two Muslim countries? 

It is easy to identify, to feel as if it is our own country.

Also an intriguing sense of guilt: ?We were lucky and they weren?t??

Iran?s dilemmas are harsh.

Wellsprings of poetry, architecture, arts? 

It is ahead of Turkey in the number of internationally published scientific papers?

But there is still whipping, stoning to death?

Reformist Mohammad Khatami came with a landslide 70 percent in 1997.

But the Islamic regime held its ground.

In 2009, Mir-Hossein Moussavi was a hope but lost the elections to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Allegations of fraud resulted in a big revolt, unseen since the 1979 Revolution.

?We will fight, we will die but we will regain Iran,? chanted hundreds of thousands? ...