Russian President Vladimir Putin was just visiting, and now Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is welcoming another authoritarian state leader in Budapest: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This is Erdogan's third official visit to Budapest since 2013 - and once again, he will be delighted to receive a very warm welcome from Orbán.
While the relationship between the Hungarian Prime Minister and Putin is characterized by partnership pragmatism, Orbán and Erdogan share a close, sometimes chummy relationship. Orbán sincerely admires the Turkish leader for his style of politics. In public, the two call each other "love and good, personal friends."
Orbán is in the EU in a "stand-alone" attitude
Erdogan's visit to Orbán takes place at a delicate time - the European-Turkish relationship has once again reached a low point:
- Despite massive protests from NATO partner countries and the European Union, the Turkish army has invaded northern Syria to fight Kurdish militias.
- The European Union wanted to condemn the military offensive in mid-October in a sharply worded resolution - and failed Orbán's veto.
His "one-on-one" attitude defends Hungary's prime minister, arguing that Turkey is Europe's most important strategic partner in the refugee crisis that needs help. Otherwise Erdogan may make his threat true and let millions of refugees go. That, according to Orbán, is not in Europe's interest.
Budapest wants good relations with Berlin, Moscow - and Istanbul
In addition, according to Orbán, his country has a specific interest in good relations with Turkey. For the past thousand years, Hungary has been moving between the power centers of Berlin, Moscow and Istanbul, according to the head of the Budapest government. Therefore, Hungary should be particularly careful in its relations with these three centers.
While the German-Hungarian relationship has become increasingly frosty in recent years, Orbán will reaffirm his unconditional support for Turkey's encounter with Erdogan. Maybe even very clearly - in the past he had accused the EU, for example, a "dishonest deal" with Turkey.
But Orbán's attitude goes far beyond Hungarian interests and realpolitik. Because Turkey is not economically one of the important partners of Hungary:
- For a long time, Orbán has been seeking a minimum bilateral trade volume of $ 5 billion a year - but last year it was only $ 3 billion.
- In the future, the trade in Russian gas through the pipeline "Turkish Stream" will improve the balance sheet.
- In addition, Orbán wants a massive upgrade of the Hungarian army, while his government wants to buy weapons in Turkey.
Orbán's affinity with Turkey also has personal reasons. A longtime friend of the Hungarian Prime Minister is Adnan Polat, the Turkish real estate mogul and former president of the Galatasaray Istanbul football club:
- In Hungary, for example, he did business with Orbán's son-in-law, István Tiborcz, and renovated the famous tomb of Sufi saint Gül Baba in Budapest.
- He also wants to invest several hundred million euros in Hungary's renewable energy sector.
Polat has probably also brought Orbán and Erdogan closer together. No other head of state or government has been as close to the Hungarian prime minister in recent years as Erdogan.
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He sees himself and his country in a similar situation as Erdogan and Turkey. Hungary, too, was looking for its own path and model, he once said, and he had learned from Erdogan that one had to fight for national independence, even at the price of international criticism. In 2013, Orbán praised the Turkish leader as saying he was a courageous person who made tough choices. And added, "We all want to be like him".
Orbán has made a pledge to Erdogan in 2017
Orbán's allegiance to Erdogan went so far as to be the only EU leader to defend the Turkish President's crackdown on anti-government protests in 2013 and reassured him on a visit to Ankara in 2017 that Hungary "never receives any anti-Turkey statements in major EU states connect ".
Contributing to this unusual close friendship is also likely that the two statesmen each have an archenemy - for Orbán it is the US stock exchange billionaire Hungarian-Jewish origin George Soros, for Erdogan the Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen.
It was therefore probably no coincidence that Hungarian authorities in 2016 against an alleged Gülen-close school for suspected terrorism. Erdogan's Maarif Foundation is now set to open a school in Budapest. The fact that the foundation is suspected of having connections to radical Islamists does not disturb Orbán, who likes to warn of the danger of Islamist terrorism through migration.