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When Spanish monarchs Fernando and Isabel expelled jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Ottoman Sultan Beyazid II sends them to Spain to send them to what is now Turkey and welcome them to their empire.
More than 500 years later, the descendants of these Sephardic Turkish Jews embarked on another potentially saving journey, but this time it is their European citizenship that they will have to thank: passports acquired in Spain and Portugal since 2015, when the two countries began. The Jews whose ancestors had been banished from these lands in the 15th century.
In recent weeks, many Jews from Istanbul and the coastal city of Izmir have made the adventure across the border to neighboring Bulgaria, where they have been invited to obtain COVID-19 vaccines.
While Pfizer-Biontech, Modern and other vaccines have been made for almost all Americans today, this is not the case in Turkey. So far, only the elderly can be vaccinated, and the vaccine pool is largely made up. Sinovac of China, whose effectiveness rate is particularly lower than that of all its Western counterparts.
Turkish officials said they expect to get about 90 million doses of Pfizer by the end of July. There are more than 15,000 Jews in Turkey, most of them Sephardic.
In Bulgaria, however, only Western vaccines are available, but there is an obvious surplus: skepticism towards vaccines among Bulgarians has left many doses unused.
A recent convoy of vaccines, on 14 May, left Istanbul with 40 or 45 cars full of Turkish Jews to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, as well as Bourgas and Plovdiv, two cities that are not on the Turkish border, Avlaramoz, a Turkish one. press conference, he reported.
While Bulgarian vaccination sites were open to all, the Bulgara border, as a member of the European Union, was still closed to others without European citizenship or visas from Schengen countries, which come with 26 European countries, with open border policies between them.
This prevented up to Turks from crossing the border to get vaccinated in Bulgaria.
“Only other people with dual nationality can go,” said Tali Behar, a Turkish Jew who had gone to Plovdiv for the shooting. A few weeks ago, when many Turkish Jews discovered that their Spanish and Portuguese passports could simply help them get vaccinated against COVID-19, the news spread like gunpowder in the Jewish community.
“The Jewish network is very well connected, ” said Behar to Forward. “At the time, there were a lot of emails from other people going to Bourgas and elsewhere, sending the location where they can be vaccinated and other information. “
But the unforeseen influx of Turks into Bulgarian hospitals in mid-May led the Bulgarian government to ban non-resident European citizens from receiving new vaccines. However, many Turkish Jews were still controlled to embark on the adventure before repression and some afterwards. The government has shown that Turks who have unloaded their first dose in Bulgaria will be welcome for their dose so far.
When implemented for Iberian passports, many Turkish Jews saw them as protective nets that would be useful in the event of an increase in anti-Semitism or a decline in the economy in Turkey, but no one saw them as a means of getting a vaccine. so hard to get.
“We had no idea about all this back then,” Behar recalls. “For me, the most vital thing I had for my son, I looked for him so that he would have as many traits as I could, especially to paint or examine in Europe. “Behar said.
“We feel privileged to have the European passport of the moment,” Behar added. “With them, we feel like we’re being treated as a component of the Premier League. “
A more vaccinated Turkish Jewish network also means that a beloved Summer Jewish culture can continue this year: Jews in Istanbul spend their holidays on Buyukada Island, one of the so-called Marmara Islands, just 21 km from Istanbul’s Old Town.
“We wanted to have an elegant summer on the island of Buyukada,” Behar said. Now, according to Behar, the joke in Istanbul is that Buyakada will be the safest place in the city, “because Jews are vaccinated. “
David Ian Klein covers the latest news and foreign Jewish communities for the future. You can sign up Klein@forward. com and on Twitter @davidianklein.
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