Nearly a generation ago, people from Wise crossed an ocean and discovered an unlikely friend on Turkey’s Aegean coast.
The relationship between Wise and Çeşme did not begin with a single ceremony or delegation. It took root in 1995 through a sequence of research, academic and diplomatic exchanges that gradually drew the two communities together. By the following year, delegations were traveling between Southwest Virginia and Turkey, and Wise Mayor Caynor Smith made his own journey there.
What followed was more than a sister-city proclamation. It became an experiment in citizen diplomacy.
Three decades later, Wise could use it more.
Wise has always been more connected to the world than its location in the Appalachian Mountains might suggest. The coal industry brought investors, engineers, physicians, workers and families from different backgrounds into Southwest Virginia. Clinch Valley College, now the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, brought professors and students from across the country and overseas.
The connection with Turkey added another chapter.
In April and May 1995, Dr. N. Brent Kennedy traveled in Turkey with a documentary film crew as part of research into Melungeon history and possible connections with peoples of the eastern Mediterranean. Whatever conclusions one reaches about those historical theories, the journey produced something indisputable: relationships.
The contacts soon expanded beyond historical research.
Representatives of Clinch Valley College traveled to Turkey. Turkish visitors came to Wise. Academic, cultural and civic relationships began to overlap. By the fall of 1995, the idea of connecting Wise with Çeşme had become far more substantial than an interesting conversation.
A Turkish newspaper article published in November 1995 even looked ahead to a visit by Wise Mayor Caynor Smith. The chronology matters. The friendship took root during 1995, while the larger civic exchange involving Smith appears to have followed in 1996.
An organized group traveled to Turkey in October 1996, including a scheduled visit to Çeşme on October 13. Contemporary accounts describe roughly 30 visitors participating in the broader exchange.
For people from Southwest Virginia, Çeşme must have been a stark contrast.
The Turkish community sits on a peninsula that reaches into the Aegean Sea west of İzmir. Today it is known for its beaches, marinas, historic sites and international tourism. Wise is surrounded by Appalachian ridges rather than the blue Mediterranean.
That difference was part of the attraction.
The exchange gave residents on both sides a chance to discover that geography, language and religion did not have to prevent friendship.
Smith later recalled meeting the mayor of Istanbul, who asked what impression Turkey had made on him. Smith answered that the warmth of its people had struck him.
The Turkish mayor put his hand on Smith’s shoulder.
“People all around the world love each other,” Smith recalled him saying. “People all around the world are like this. It’s only governments that are different.”
That simple exchange may say more about the purpose of sister-city relationships than any proclamation ever could.
Smith helped give the developing friendship the legitimacy of one local government reaching out to another. By 1997, the exchange was clearly working in both directions. Smith publicly discussed his trip to Çeşme, while the mayor of Çeşme traveled to Southwest Virginia.
But government officials were only part of the story.
Turkish students came to the region, and relationships developed with the Napoleon Hill Foundation and other institutions. At least one Turkish student stayed in Southwest Virginia and helped build a successful regional business.
That is what cultural exchange can accomplish when it moves beyond ceremony.
It creates friendships, but it can also create education, commerce and opportunity.
Wise still has an international dimension. The University of Virginia’s College at Wise reported 35 international students from 20 countries in fall 2023. By fall 2025, that had grown to 47 students representing 24 countries.
In a community the size of Wise, those numbers matter.
International students bring the world into local classrooms, restaurants, churches, businesses and friendships. Just as importantly, local students encounter people whose languages, customs and experiences differ from their own.
A young person raised in the coalfields can learn something from someone raised beside the Aegean Sea. The student from overseas can learn something equally valuable from the mountains of Southwest Virginia.
Today, three decades after those first exchanges, Caynor Smith is again mayor of Wise.
That symmetry is striking.
Many of the people who built the original relationship are older now. Some are gone. Photographs have been packed away. Memories have faded. Institutional connections have weakened.
But the reasons for international engagement have not disappeared.
If anything, they are stronger.
Wise continues to search for ways to retain young people, attract investment, encourage entrepreneurship and expose students to opportunities beyond the region. Communities competing for talent and capital cannot afford to look only inward.
Renewing ties with Çeşme need not begin with a large delegation or an expensive ceremony.
It might start with a conversation between the two towns, a video exchange between students, university cooperation, cultural programming, tourism promotion or renewed contact among civic organizations.
Perhaps another delegation eventually follows.
The important thing is the connection.
The lasting lesson from the Wise–Çeşme relationship was never simply that a small Appalachian town once had a sister city in Turkey.
It was that Wise had the confidence to look beyond the mountains.
In 1995, residents reached thousands of miles across the world and found people willing to reach back. By 1996 and 1997, conversations had become delegations, visits, friendships and lasting memories.
Thirty years later, Wise still needs that wider horizon.
The first generation built the bridge.
Another generation should have the opportunity to cross it.
Jack Kennedy, a Wise County native, lawyer and former clerk of court, now serves as an educator-docent at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum and helps preserve launch-pad oral histories through the “Living Legends of Launch” project.
