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After tense Germany trip, Erdogan set for warm reception in Hungary
BUDAPEST, Oct 8, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Less than two weeks after a trip to
Germany marked by strained relations, Turkish President Recep Tayyip is set
for a warmer welcome when he visits Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest
on Monday.
The Hungarian leader was one of the first to congratulate Erdogan on his
re-election in July and one of the few European officials to attend the
inauguration ceremony in Ankara.
A fierce critic of what he sees as an undemocratic Europe, Orban has
repeatedly hailed the “stability” that he perceives the Turkish regime
offers.
After a very tense trip to Germany at the end of September, in the wake of
various diplomatic spats between Berlin and Ankara, Erdogan’s two-day visit
to Hungary is likely to prove much smoother sailing.
“It’s nice for him to visit an EU country where he isn’t under fire for his
record on human rights and democracy,” said Tamas Szigetvari, economics
professor at Peter Pazmany University in Budapest.
The trip will also allow Erdogan to show his critics that “no, the EU
hasn’t completely turned its back on Turkey,” the expert told AFP.
Ankara needs the EU as relations with the US deteriorate and the Turkish
economy, very dependent on trade with Europe, is in difficulty.
Erdogan will meet with President Janos Ader at 1100 GMT and then Orban two
hours later. Orban and Erdogan are scheduled to hold a joint press conference
afterwards.
– Turkey’s ‘cousins’ –
The Turkish leader and the Hungarian premier, who secured his third
consecutive term in office in April, are perceived to be made of the same
mettle, democratically elected but with authoritarian and distinctly anti-
liberal tendencies.
Restrictions on freedom of expression in Turkey have come in for sharp
international criticism, while Hungary risks sanctions from the EU over
legislative changes seen as a threat to the rule of law and the bloc’s
values.
Relations between Hungary and Turkey may currently be cordial. But the two
countries’ history has not alway been so friendly, and Hungary was occupied
by the Ottoman empire for a century and a half between 1541 and 1699.
Nowadays, Erdogan professes nostalgia for the Ottoman empire, while Orban’s
government promotes so-called “turanist” theories, hotly disputed by
historians and linguists, that see Turkish and Finno-Ugric languages,
including Hungarian, as sharing a common origin.
On a visit to Kyrgyzstan in September, Orban lauded Hungarian as a “strange
and unique language related to Turkish languages.”
Tamas Szigetvari argues that such theories enable Orban to portray Hungary
as a sort of distant cousin to countries in Asia that Budapest is wooing for
economic reasons.
But not everyone is happy about the cordial relations between the two
countries: a small centre-left party said that a demonstration it had been
planning to protest Erdogan’s visit has been banned under a new law that came
into force this month that restricts freedom of assembly.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1622 hrs