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Clarification. I think this question is confusing to the answerers for some reason. I would like to make it clear that this question is not about the validity of the Hungarian Turanic ideology. It's also not a request for papers on Turanism. Please read the question before answering it.


I do hope this question isn't going to be found too localized for this site. I'm sorry if I'm wrong.

Jobbik is a major Hungarian party that embraces the Hungarian Turanic ideology, which is that Hungarians should ally first and foremost with the other (sic!) Turkic nations. ("Turkic" doesn't mean here what it usually means in scientific discourse.) In the words of the party's chairman, Gábor Vona:

We, Hungarians are the most westerly of the Eastern people. If we put aside the lies about our Finno-Ugric origin, and only profess that we are the descendents of Atilla, we would suddenly find hundreds of millions ready to form a common basis for alliance. In fact, there are about two hundred million people living in the world today, who can say that they are descendants of Atilla. It is not possible, of course, to build a political strategy based on this fact alone. However, if we take a look at the countries from Bulgaria to Turkey and all the way across to Eastern Asia, we realise that we, Hungarians could have a lot of common political objectives with these countries. We come to realise that an alliance based and developed on the principles of Turanism instead of the Euro-Atlantic alliance would be more effective in serving the needs and interests of our nation.

In order to avoid misunderstandings, we need to clarify that this would in no way mean that Hungary should separate from Europe. In fact, what we propose would mean a strengthening of our position in Europe, as Hungary could thus become the Western bastion of a Turanic alliance, as well as its representative within the European Union. We also need not worry about the fact that as a Christian nation, we would be dealing with non-Christian nations. Living a non-Christian way of life is already a common, wide-spread practice within the EU. Besides which, we can safely say that a true Muslim believer or any other true believer in their own country is closer to God the Almighty, than non-practicing Christians inhabiting Europe today. If Hungary wants to regain its positions as a strong player on the stage of international politics it should not head in the direction showed by Fidesz and MSZP, the clownish antics exhibited within the EU, but instead membership in a Turanic alliance, or if needed, its leading role and initiative in forming such an alliance.

(Yes, he did misspell his purported ancestor's name twice.)

It is also a conservative party. That being so, I would expect the party to be particularly concerned about the survival of the traditional Polono-Hungarian friendship. I do know that during this year's Independence Day celebrations, some Jobbik's youth wing's members came to Poland to march along with Poles. (The Polish political arena is extremely polarized these days, and there were in fact two separate celebrations in the country, each having an unfriendly or even hostile attitude toward the other. I do believe Jobbik's members came to join the celebrations of the more nationalist part of the Polish society.) This could say one of two things I think. It could mean that Jobbik or some of Jobbik's members wanted to help the nationalist ideas in a nearby country. They could do that everywhere. It could also be that Jobbik found it important to help Poland in particular, or at least the Polish nationalist, because of the long history of friendship between the two nations.

However, my googling skills have been insufficient to find any more examples of Jobbik's commitment to the idea. Given the Turanic ideology the party expresses, it wouldn't be inconsistent if the party weren't committed to the idea very much.

What I would like to know is the position of the party on the Polono-Hungarian relations, especially in light of the traditional friendship between the two nations. It would be great if you could quote the party's leaders in your answers.

Please refrain from commenting on the validity of their political or historical views. This is not what this question is about.

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    The question is interesting (although could use a bit of streamlining to avoid TL;DR syndrome IMHO), but I fear the answer may end up being prosaic "political actors acting irrationally. News at 11" :)
    – user4012
    Dec 26, 2012 at 23:58
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    On an unrelated not, how the eff are they backing up their the lies about our Finno-Ugric origin idea? Hungarians are pretty well established on that tree.
    – user4012
    Dec 27, 2012 at 0:00
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    @DVK You can take a look here, especially at Dogma #7. I would prefer this question not to turn into a bashing of Jobbik's ideology, especially given that most of it would probably be off topic on this site. As for tl;dr, please feel free to edit the question and cut what you consider unimportant. I just hope those users who know the subject will also be interested in it enough to read a couple of paragraphs.
    – ymar
    Dec 27, 2012 at 0:14
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    What you are misinterpreting as friendship between Hungarian and Poles is simply friendship between similar, extremists right-wing parties and voters: when fascist parties spread in Europe in the 30s, there were many national fascist parties (NSDAP in Germany, PNF in Italy etc.) working together with common goals. Apparently, that kind of cooperation is politically more important to them than any ideology. Since nations are imagined communities, they can correct ideology later to adapt to the current political opportunity.
    – chirale
    Jan 13, 2013 at 18:40
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    @chirale I don't think I'm misinterpreting anything. The friendship between Poland and Hungary is older than fascism or right-wing parties. It was well estabilished hundreds of years ago. It has manifested itself many times in politics, at war and also between regular people. Educated Poles and Hungarians have always known about it, and many have acted accordingly. I know stories firsthand of Poles going to Hungary and being welcomed very warmly just for being Polish. And similar stories happened very long ago too.
    – ymar
    Jan 14, 2013 at 18:20

2 Answers 2

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I am from Hungary and I looked for Hungarian source of Poland, Polish and other keywords on Jobbik's website. As I expected, they seem neutral-positive towards the Polish people depending on the type of news, they suspect the Jews behind international agreements against neo-nazism. They have an fairly antisemitic attitude. But, for example, they cheered a letter from Młodzież Wszechpolska. So their sympathy is more to the right wing radicals than to the Polish people.

They really have Turanian ideas, but their main target to blame are the Jewish population of the world and mostly the Israel state. They don't like the Slovak, the Romanian and the Serbian nationalism, these feelings being backed by the loss of the territory in 1920. Check the Trianon Treaty for further information. They try to build up a strong relationship with the Arabic world.

They also have a strong feeling to help similar ideas in countries they do like, including Poland.

Hopefully, I hope this partially answers your question.

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    And a notice, on 23rd of Oct, Fidesz brought Polish protesters to enrich their numbers. I think this became some idiotic PR for parties. I like polish people, as well as many others, and I really hate that the politicans try to use the traditional friendship for their personal needs. Feb 14, 2013 at 14:24
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All translations mistakes are mine, so don't judge the sources based on possibly poor use of English.

First of all, everybody in Poland knows, that Lengyel, Magyar – két jó barát.

As for the answer. On 26th of January, 2013, on the Annual Congress of Jobbik, party's leader Gabor Vona declared the will to cooperate with Poland and Croatia with the aim of creating an alliance. While this idea isn't new at the right-winged scene, recently it has marginal potential of realization.

Polish right-wing media describe it this way:

At the beginning, Vona referred to foreign politics, raising huge applause of the audience by the idea of alliance between Poland, Hungary and Croatia, which would be a pillar to building independence of the nations of Central Europe.

Later in the text:

Hungarian nationalists welcomed Poles very positively. When the leader of Jobbik, Gabor Vona pointed at hanging transparent of Młodzież Wszechpolska (All-Polish Youth organization), it was accompanied by the long applause of all room.

And finally...

After the meeting, Polish delegation had the opportunity to speak with the leader of Jobbik, who expressed big contentment regarding progress of Polish nationalist movement, mentioning Independence March on 11th of September. He was very happy with the gifted t-shirt which referred to the friendship between Poland and Hungary.

I believe that puts a bit of light on this matter.

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