For age-old adversaries, the two nations certainly are acting a lot like kin. Both the Turks and the Greeks have proved their readiness to put aside their longstanding disputes in times of crisis and lend one another a hand. When the 7.4-magnitude temblor hit northwestern Turkey on Aug. 17, Greece surprised not only Turkey but much of the world by sending relief workers and supplies. Now, while still struggling to recover from that more severe quake, Turkey is repaying the favor. The first foreign relief team to reach Athens was a group of 20 members of the Turkish rescue team AKUT, flown in aboard an Air Force cargo plane 13 hours after the quake struck Tuesday afternoon. Turkish officials from the president on down phoned their Greek counterparts to offer sympathy and support. The Turkish Red Crescent, which was criticized for its lethargic performance after the Turkish disaster, quickly sent relief supplies to Athens. may you recover soon, neighbor, read the heartfelt headline–in Greek–in the leading Turkish daily, Milliyet. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said that the Turks were now sharing the Greek people’s pain, just as the Greeks had shared Turkey’s three weeks earlier. “Nature has reminded us once more of the common destiny of our two countries,” he said.

Historically, that destiny has led more often to hostility than to help. For decades, the two sides have feuded over the rights to certain islands, air space, territorial waters, the continental shelf in the Aegean and, of course, Cyprus. In the past quarter century, they’ve come to the brink of war several times. Ill feelings flared up once more in February after Turkish special forces captured the Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, whom the Greeks had been sheltering in Kenya.

But relations have turned downright friendly since Greece first came to Turkey’s aid last month. In addition to sending rescue teams and equipment, Athens organized blood drives and staged concerts and football matches to raise money for its neighbor. Last week the erstwhile enemies completed the first two days of a series of scheduled talks on noncontroversial issues such as trade, tourism and the environment. And in a significant reversal, during a meeting of the European Union’s foreign ministers, Greece’s George Papandreou said his government had no objections to Turkey’s membership in the EU. Athens also approved $160 million in EU aid for Turkey. For its part, Turkey last week canceled an annual anti-Greek demonstration in the western port of Izmir. This week Papandreou will meet with his new chum Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem to try to further the detente.

No government is happier about the thaw than Washington, which has tried for years to soothe tensions between its two NATO allies. President Clinton praised the new “spirit of cooperation.” But some officials in the region caution not to read too much into the show of good will. Citing the many “concrete problems” that exist between the two countries, Papandreou said simply: “Let us hope that the climate that has been created will contribute [toward solving them], but let us wait.” Said Korkmaz Haktanir, Turkish under secretary of foreign affairs, “It’s good to see this new atmosphere, but this does not change our parameters regarding the vital issues, at least for the time being.”

At the very least, the double disaster will likely promote one new area of cooperation: earthquake research. Although the two quakes did not occur along the same fault line, seismologists believe they are loosely related. Three continental plates–the Eurasian, African and Arabian–meet beneath the Aegean Sea, and if any one of them moves, the other two respond, grinding like a set of mismatched gears. But “research could not be held in the Aegean Sea due to the ongoing tension between Turkey and Greece,” says Naci Gorur, the dean of Istanbul Technical University. Now he proposes that the two countries carry out joint research in international waters to study fault lines. For as much as each country appreciates the aid of the other, both would prefer never to need it again.