CHESTNUT HILL, Massachusetts (April 4, 2000) - On the living room mantelpiece in the home of George Philippidis and Dilek Aksu-Philippidis, an Orthodox Greek icon of St. George slaying the dragon sits inches away from a pewter plate bearing the highly stylized monogram of Ottoman Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. On the walls, vivid paintings of idyllic Greek seascapes complement the similarly colorful handwoven Turkish kilims covering the floor.

Overcoming initial hostility from George’s parents about their son marrying a Turk and centuries of mutual hostility between their countries, the couple and their 1-year-old daughter, Isabella, have added an unexpected element to the American melting pot from their home in Chestnut Hill.

Fearing their daughter would gain a full appreciation of the host culture only if she were raised in either Greece or Turkey, the couple decided the United States would be the best place to nurture her in both ethnic heritages. They hope their family may one day look like less of an anomaly and more of a sign their countries’ relations are truly warming.

The devastating earthquakes that hit Turkey and Greece within weeks of each other late last summer triggered a mutual outpouring of aid and relief between the two neighbors, dramatically kick-starting a relationship that had previously been marked by distrust and warfare. Last December, Greece dropped its opposition to European Union membership for its long-time rival. And in January, Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou and his Turkish counterpart Ismail Cem signed an historic series of treaties outlining increased cooperation in such fields as trade and tourism. Both will be honored with the East-West Institute’s Statesman of the Year Award in New York on May 2. A third round of proximity talks on Cyprus, one of the major points of contention between the countries, is scheduled to begin next month.

For the second day, Isabella is walking. Her dad picks her up and smiles. “This is what happens when Greeks and Turks make peace,” he says. All four of George’s grandparents grew up in the once-thriving Greek cities of what is now Turkey. His mother’s parents lived in Pontus, a region on the Black Sea coast. George’s paternal grandparents grew up in Burdur, now in southwestern Turkey. They were forced to leave their homes during the 1919-1922 Greco-Turkish War, which triggered a massive populations exchange of thousands, with Christians moving to Greece and Muslims moving to Turkey. “They brought with them a lot of bittersweet memories,” George says.

Dilek’s Greek Muslim grandfather left the island of Crete for Turkey during the upheaval. George was raised in the Greek town of Thessaloniki, hometown of Turkish nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk, who helped bring down the Ottoman Empire and replaced it with the modern state of Turkey in 1923.

In the mid-1980s, George came to the United States with a graduate school scholarship. After attaining his doctorate, he started his career in Denver, Colorado, which would turn his life again to Aegean shores.

“I was not planning to go to Turkey, ever,” says George, who when growing up was exposed to the almost exclusively negative views of Turkey held by his family, friends and the Greek media.

But in 1991, his company called on him to give a presentation at a NATO conference on biotechnology in Turkey. After initial confusion over what to do and strong disapproval from his parents, he decided to attend the conference in the Aegean resort town of Kusadasi. He was pleasantly surprised at what he found.

“The change started as soon as I landed there,” George says. “I was shocked to find that it is very similar to Greece”. He enjoyed talking with sociable Turkish delegates at the conference about everything from regional politics to Greek basketball. His impression changed even more after feeling “love at first sight for Dilek,” who was then working as a liaison between the hotel hosting the conference and the firm hired by NATO to oversee the conference.

By the end of the conference, things had gone well enough that Dilek invited him to stay at her family’s home in Izmir for a few days before he returned to America. There he met Dilek’s mother and brother, who took an immediate liking to him. George says he had additional interest in Izmir, known in Greek as Smyrna, which is of great cultural importance in Greek history as a major center of Greek civilization. Homer is thought to have been born there. “In the minds of the Greeks, Smyrna is a very special place,” George says.

In September 1922, under attacks from the Turkish army newly reenergized by Ataturk’s leadership, thousands of Greeks left town when their shops and homes and the historic downtown were destroyed by an enormous fire. Historians argue over whether the fire was deliberately set by Turkish soldiers or by accident.

George says visiting modern Izmir was another turning point for him in his changing attitude towards Turkey. “After I visited Izmir, that’s the time I realized that it doesn’t make sense anymore to think of these cities as something that should be part of Greece,” he says.

Growing up in Izmir, Dilek regularly interacted with Greeks from the nearby islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Kos in the marketplace and says the relations between the communities were good, not of strident stereotypical strain that is usually seen as the norm. Many of the Greeks living closest to Turkey, she says, are not worried about resurgence of Ottoman expansionism, as are some mainland Greeks. “The irony is, the Greeks on the islands are much less hostile towards Turks,” she says.

In 1992 George and Dilek traveled to Istanbul, known to Greeks as Constantinople and which they call the “Queen of Cities”. They visited what was one of the largest and holiest churches of Christendom, the Hagia Sophia. George says seeing the mosaics of Jesus and Mary he had seen so often in books “come alive” was “a dream come true.”

“It made me feel very nice and at the same time very sad.” he says. “You just see a part of your heritage in another country and it feels strange”.

In 1934, Ataturk ordered the Christian mosaics uncovered and the building converted into a museum in deference to the building’s pre-Islamic heritage. The mosaics had been concealed for almost five centuries following the Turkish taking of Constantinople in 1453 – the final blow to the Byzantine Empire – when the building served as a mosque. The juxtaposition of the Christian mosaics and enormous plaques of Islamic calligraphic renderings of “Allah” and “Mohammed” is a striking characteristic of the building, which Ataturk also ordered converted into a museum open to all.

In a secular ceremony in the United States, the couple married in 1993. The next year they traveled to Thessaloniki, where Dilek met her parents-in-law. “For my family it was a big shock. She was Turkish and Muslim. Those two things created a lot of animosity,” George says. However, his family and friends were pleasantly surprised by Dilek’s blonde hair and blue eyes (which were passed on to her daughter). Although Dilek was warmly accepted, George says his family still views his wife as more of an exception. “In their minds I was someone who wore a veil and went to religious school,” she says. Through their daughter-in-law, however, George’s family soon saw a side of modern, Western-influenced Turkey that shattered their stereotypical expectations.

Dilek was impressed with the similarity of Izmir and Thessaloniki, both of which she says have too many boxy modern apartment complexes and too little green space, but lively markets and picturesque ports linked to the Aegean Sea. With a population of one million, Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece. Izmir is Turkey’s third largest city and home to three million. “Our hometowns are almost identical,” Dilek says. Both she and her husband say that except for variances in language and religion, similarities between Greece and Turkey – in such matters as food, dress, and climate – are pronounced.

Both George and Dilek are hopeful that eventually a true and lasting relationship between their countries can take place, but they say that entrenched attitudes will take many years to change. “It will take one or two more generations.” George says. “It will not happen overnight.”

One more member of the next generation, Alexandra Philippidis, is due to be born in July. Her mother hopes her daughters will live in a century marked by more peaceful relations. “We want Isabella and Alexandra to live in a world where Greece and Turkey can be friends. By the time they grow up, things will be better.”