Bangladesh is definitely not the Middle East. I just figured the kind of person who thinks of authoritarianism as fascism is more likely to be familiar with authoritarian governments in the Middle East because they're covered in Western mainstream news outlets and aren't treated as fascist regimes.
Wow, I had no idea that "Middle East" referred to different regions in different languages - that's interesting.
Btw we say "Near East" in English too and it's vaguely defined but it usually includes Israel. But I don't think it's wrong to say that Israel is in the "Middle East" too - the two terms overlap somewhat.
I didn't read this as OP saying Bangladesh is in the middle east, but rather an example of authoritarian countries they'd assume we have all heard bad things about but nobody calls them fascist.
If Bangladesh is the "Middle East" then so is Burma/Myanmar and Thailand (which is at most 200 miles from the Bangladesh border)