[LINK] "Summer Madness on the Great Eurasian Steppe"

[rfmcdonald]

Czech journalist Martin Ehl, writing for Transitions Online, writes about how Hungarian Turanism--briefly, an incorrect nationalist theory that links Hungary not only with the Finnic peoples of northern Europe but with Turkic groups and various central Asians--is being used by Hungary's ruling Fidesz party to provide ideological justification for its rule. See here for an example of this theory as presented with a light nationalist spin.

It's worth noting, in the context of the extradition of Armenian-killing Azerbaijani military officer Ramil Safarov back to his homeland, that Azerbaijan as a Turkic nation-state is seen by Turanists as a kindred nation of Hungary. Perhaps there was a secondary motivation to the extradition behind the promise of bond purchases?

By giving its blessing to an obscure festival that propagates the ties between the Hungarian nation and the tribes of Central Asia through a theory with historical and living links to the Hungarian extreme right, Orban’s Fidesz party has tossed another explosive device into relations between Budapest and the rest of Europe.

Up to a quarter of a million visitors descended on the plain near the small town of Bugac in central Hungary this past weekend for the fourth annual Kurultaj, a gathering of tribal chiefs and national folklore groups that pay lip service to the tradition of Turanism.

The Turanians, so the theory runs, were a tribe of Iranian origin led by the mighty Tur. They were later identified with the Turks and later still embraced as forebears by several Central Asian nations in search of their ultimate origins. Most modern scholars regard this as an ungrounded theory, a modern legend.

In Hungary, the belief in the Magyars’ Turanian origins took hold in right-wing circles between the wars, a time when a part of the Hungarian elite sought cures for the trauma of the Trianon Treaty and the loss of two-thirds of the Hungarian empire’s territory and a third of its population. Far more dangerous than the Turan I – Hungary’s only domestic tank during World War II, built on license from Czechoslovakia’s Skoda works – Turanism became part of the ideological arsenal of the Hungarian Arrow Cross fascists.

The Arrow Cross line leads directly to the members and fellow travelers of today’s extreme-right Jobbik party, marked among other things by its undisguised anti-Semitism. With cynical irony you could remark that Jobbik’s public support for the anti-Israel statements of Iranian leaders stems not just from ideology but also from the belief in a shared ancestry.

For the first time this year, the Kurultaj festival became a semi-official event, although until now it’s been associated mainly with Jobbik. Marton Gyongyosi, the deputy chairman of Jobbik and of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, spoke last weekend of the need to seek the roots of the Hungarian nation in the east, the MTI news agency reported. He talked of the fictional Finno-Ugric theory “by which the Hungarians’ enemies try to undermine them,” and praised the official governmental “opening to the East” policy – which is nothing more than Budapest’s attempt to extricate itself from diplomatic isolation in Europe by looking for friends in Asia.

The musty theory of Turanism serves this purpose excellently. Tribal leaders were welcomed in parliament by deputy speaker and Fidesz member Sandor Leszak, and the government donated $310,000 to the Kurultaj organization. This weekend parliament saw not just oldsters in exotic folk costumes on its Secession-style benches, but also displays of battle scenes and falconry, among other things.

[. . .]

The Hungarian government’s cozying up to a mythology exploited by fascists is taking place against a backdrop of the “rehabilitation” of the interwar dictator Miklos Horthy – he’s had streets renamed after him and a statue of him erected – and international criticism of rising anti-Semitism in Hungary. It could be grounds to surmise that Orban and his party are nearer to the extremists of Jobbik than Europeans had previously thought.