Usually, the Isreal/Tel Aviv tech scene is "grouped" with the European scene. A bunch of publications cover Europe + Israel, so I figured why not.

While Israel is a very unique cultural blend, I would call them more European than Middle Eastern. And for immigration culture is arguably more important than geography.

Because it takes part in (and occasionally wins) the Eurovision song contest.

By that logic, Australia is European, too :-)

Though I don't think they've won yet.

Realistically, the main reason that Israel is often counted with Europe is probably that they don't get along well with their neighbors. The implications for stuff like sports competitions could be nasty.

> The implications for stuff like sports competitions could be nasty.

After the murder of Israeli athletes by the PLO/Black September at the Munich Olympics, that seems a long way off.

Eurovision-wise the story is a little sad: Lebanon wanted to enter, but since the country forbids broadcasting Israeli content (!) and the EBU refuses to let countries cut the programme, this was impossible. I believe this rule was inspired by a previous incident where an Arab country cut away to a vase of flowers for 3 minutes to avoid broadcasting the Israeli entry.

Don't really know much about Israel other than what I see in the news. What is an example of someone who would move there who isn't already entitled via religious connections?

People from countries with lower salaries, obviously :)

But not Turkey...(?)

Probably because the culture is separated, which is not the case with Israel?

I worked in a startup in Turkey (Istanbul) years ago (currently working in a startup in Boston). The culture was pretty "Western". The office had a beer fountain and my manager was really chill, it was an enjoyable experience. Not sure if you would be able to find that in any other part of the country though.

I heard Turkey has changed a lot in the past 5 years. Do you think it'd be the same today?

I don't know sorry. This was ~7 years ago and I lived in the US since then. I would guess it highly depends on the company. The company I worked for was a hardware/iot/web startup that was doing really fascinating work, and got good investment, and founders were graduates of best universities in Turkey. My guess is if you research the company and see that the culture is something you like, it's probably possible to find another company like that. Though I would admit finding a job somewhere else in Europe is probably orders of magnitude safer. I wouldn't do it today, but that's because I have a job I love in the US.

It's not a full list, I'm adding new entries every day. Happy to include Turkey if you send over the details.

And no Russia?

Russia is usually considered CIS, not Europe+friends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_St...