What is going on in Hungary? - February 2013

Erdogan Visited Hungary

Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, visited Budapest on February 5 and met his Hungarian colleague, Viktor Orbán. It was agreed that Turkey will found a Turkish cultural institute in Budapest and the Ottoman cultural memorial sights to be found in Hungary will be restored, among others the grave of Suleiman the Magnificent in Szigetvár, with the financial support of Turkey.

Hungarian Football Fans Punished for Racist Provocation

FIFA punished the Hungarian football association (MLSZ) because of the scandalous behavior of the audience on the Hungarian-Israeli friendly match on August 15, 2012. On that occasion some fans present in the audience disturbed the Israeli anthem with whistling and screaming racist and anti-Semitic slogans. MLSZ officially distanced itself from this conduct and tendered its apologies towards the ambassador of Israel. FIFA decided to punish MLSZ – and indirectly the Hungarian football hooligans – by ruling that Hungary’s World Cup qualifying match against Romania (to be held on March 22, 2013) must be played in absence of fans, in empty stadium. Therefore MLSZ appealed to the international Court of Arbitration for Sports claiming that FIFA’s punishment was disproportionate. However, the international football’s governing body recently reinforced FIFA’s decision.

Split of the Liberal Party

The Hungarian liberal-green party, LMP (Politics Can Be Different), has been split in two irreconcilable streams for a long time. The internal conflict is the dilemma created by the birth of the leftist-liberal opposition alliance “Együtt 2014” striving for defeating Fidesz on the elections of 2014. One of the streams in LMP rejected the cooperation offered by Együtt 2014, since several members of it are personalities of the political elite that ruled Hungary since 1990 and the raison d’état of LMP has been from the beginning to establish a political party independent from this elite. Although there is a huge resentment against the political elite (especially against the leftist part of it) among Hungarian voters, most of the voters showed totally irresponsive to the program of LMP. Therefore the other stream of LMP has been open for a cooperation with Együtt 2014 since its birth in October 2012. This visible internal split within LMP became an official political fact on January 27 with the secession of those LMP members (the minority) who  were willing to cooperate with Együtt 2014. The most recent public opinion polls show that the fragmented nature of the opposition is actually very helpful for Fidesz.

Agnes Kelemen,

Nationalism Studies