For thousands of years, the Aegean Sea has connected rather than divided. Between Greece and Türkiye lie 1,400 islands—each one a testament to the shared heritage that binds these lands together.

These islands have always belonged to the people who lived on them: fishermen and farmers, poets and merchants, grandmothers who speak the same words in different alphabets, grandfathers who dance to the same rhythms with different names.

Long before modern borders, the Aegean was a cultural highway. Ideas flowed freely across the water. Music evolved on one island and was refined on the next. Recipes travelled from harbour to harbour, each cook adding their own touch. Stories were told and retold, changing slightly with each telling, until no one could say where they began.

The Greeks called it kefi—that spirit of joy, passion, and soul. The Turks call it keyif—that same deep sense of pleasure and contentment. Different words, identical meaning. This is the essence of the Aegean: one culture expressed in two voices.

Walk through the markets of Izmir or the streets of Chania, and you'll taste the same sweetness in the pastries, smell the same coffee brewing in small cups, hear the same tabla and bouzouki rhythms that have echoed across these waters for centuries. The meze spreads could belong to either shore—because they belong to both.

These islands remember a time when your neighbour spoke a different language but sang the same songs at weddings. When families traded recipes along with goods. When the sea united rather than separated.

Today, we live in a world of passports and borders, of political tensions and historical grievances. But the islands remember. The food remembers. The music remembers. The people remember.

This is why we exist—to honour that memory. To celebrate what connects us rather than what divides us. To show that beneath the politics and the headlines, there is something older and more enduring: a shared culture, a shared table, a shared sea.

Because ultimately, the Aegean doesn't ask whether you're Greek or Turkish. It only asks if you're willing to listen to its stories, taste its flavours, and dance to its music.

And the answer, from 1,400 islands, has always been the same: yes.