Turkish-Hungarian summit in Budapest
November 9th, 2019Most news reports on the one-day visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan focus on the extensive road closures that paralysed the city centre for hours. The main pro-government daily argues that Hungary follows the national interest in her ties with Turkey, while an opposition daily disagrees.
On 24.hu, Dávid Molnár reports that in an unprecedented security operation, Andrássy street, one of Budapest’s main arteries, was completely emptied on two occasions on Thursday. People couldn’t leave their homes or restaurants for over an hour each time and even trams and underground railway lines were halted.
Pesti Srácok’s Tamás Pihál describes the thousands of anti-Erdoğan demonstrators, some of whom carried the red starred triangle-shaped yellow flag of the Marxist Syrian Kurdish militia as “idiots”. They want the government to adopt their view that all Turks are evil while all Kurds are angels, he suggests. Erdoğan and Putin, for that matter, were received cheerfully by earlier left-wing governments too, he remarks.
In her report on the summit in Magyar Nemzet, Loretta Tóth underlines that in addition to joint interests in economic co-operation, Hungary entertains good relations with Turkey because, as PM Orbán said, without Turkey it is impossible to stop mass immigration to Europe.
In his Népszava comment, Róbert Friss rejects the view that the government is promoting the national interest in its ties with Erdoğan. Hungary’s national interest would dictate standing with NATO and the European Union which are at loggerheads with the Turkish government, he writes.