Hungarian Turanism
Political Turanism was born in the 19th century, in response to the growing influence of Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism, both of which were seen by Hungarians as very dangerous to the nation, and the state of Hungary, because the country had large ethnic German and Slavic populations.
[1] This political ideology originated in the work of the Finnish nationalist and linguist Matthias Alexander Castrén, who presented a belief in the racial unity and future greatness of the Ural-Altaic peoples.
It called for closer collaboration and a political alliance between them and Hungary, as a means of securing and furthering the shared interests and countering the threats which were posed by the policies of the great powers of Europe.
[5] Nonetheless, Andrew C. Janos, a Hungarian political scientist of the University of California, Berkeley,[6] asserts that Turanism's role in the interwar development of far-right ideologies was negligible.
The proto-Hungarian tribes lived in the Eurasian forest steppe zone,[11] and so these ancient ancestors of Hungarians and their relationship with other equestrian nomadic peoples has been and still is a topic for research.
[16]The linguistic theories of the Dutch philosopher Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn and the German thinker Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz gave the basis of the modern scientific research of the origin of the Hungarian language and people.
To this end he asked that explorers either obtain translations of well-known Christian prayers such as the Pater Noster, or, better yet, “words for common things” (vocabula rerum vulgarium), a sample list of which he appended to a letter to the Turkologist D. Podesta (Leibniz 1768/1989b).
Leibniz took a particular interest in the expansion of the Russian Empire southward and eastward, and lists based on his model were taken on expeditions sent by the tsars to study the territories recently brought under their control, as well as the peoples living on these and on nearby lands."
2008. in: Historiographia Linguistica, 35 #1; p. 23-82.The Finnish-Hungarian connection was further developed by Philip Johan von Strahlenberg (in his work: "An historico-geographical description of the north and east parts of Europe and Asia"[17]) and Johann Eberhard Fischer [de], a German historian and language researcher, who participated in the Great Northern Expedition of 1733–1743.
In his work “Qvaestiones Petropolitanae, De origine Ungrorum”, published in 1770, Fischer put Hungarian into a group of kindred peoples and languages which he called 'Scythian' (distinct from van Boxhorn's concept of Scythian).
He considered the Ugric peoples (he called them 'Jugors', these are the Khanty and Mansi) the closest relatives of Hungarians, actually as 'Magyars left behind', and originated them from the Uyghurs, who live on the western frontiers of China.
The German linguist and Orientalist Schott was a proponent of Finn-Turk-Hungarian kinship, and considered the Hungarians a mixture of Turks and "Hyperboreans"[18] (i.e. circumpolar peoples like the Saami and Samoyeds).
Many counties (for example Heves, Pest, Szatmár) rejected the Compromise and stood up for Kossuth, the opposition organized a network of Democratic circles, on the Great Hungarian Plain anti-government and anti-Compromise demonstrations of several thousand men took place, etc.
It is based on an alleged quotation attributed to Ágoston Trefort, which appeared in an article by György Hary in the Hungarian edition of the journal Valóság (Validity), issue 10, 1976, entitled "Kiegészítések egy nyelvvita történetéhez" (Additions to the history of a language dispute).
"…from this came my hope, that with the help of comparative linguistics I could find a ray of light in Central Asia, which dispels the gloom over the dark corners of Hungarian prehistory..." "...következett tehát ebből az a reménységem, hogy Középázsiában az összehasonlító nyelvtudomány segítségével világosságot vető sugarat lelhetek, mely eloszlatja a homályt a magyar őstörténelem sötét tájairól...." in: Vámbéry Ármin: Küzdelmeim.
The Ambassador of Austria in London gave him a letter of recommendation to the Emperor, who received him in an audience and rewarded Vámbéry's international success by granting him professorship in the Royal University of Pest.
His books and other writings, presenting customs, traditions and culture of far-flung peoples and faraway places were key in raising wide public interest in ethnography, ethnology and history.
Coupled with widespread disillusionment about the political elite, Vámbéry's work turned public attention to the lower classes and peasantry, as better heirs and keepers of real Hungarian legacy.
(The neologists[clarification needed] of the first half of the 19th century had already turned towards folklore, myths, ballads and tales in their search of a new national literary style, but had not had interest in other aspects of rural peasant life.)
His'first large linguistic work, entitled "Magyar és török-tatár nyelvekbeli szóegyezések"[42] and published in 1869–70, was the casus belli of the "Ugric-Turkic War" (Ugor-török háború), which started as a scientific dispute, but quickly turned into a bitter feud which spanned two decades.
[1][60] The defeat in the First World War, and the following revolutionary movements and Entente occupation of the country disrupted the operation of the Eastern Cultural Centre, so real work began only in 1920.
[62] The intensive everyday contacts in the one and a half centuries that followed resulted in pronounced Ottoman Turkish influence on Hungarian art and culture from music to jewellery and clothing, from agriculture to warfare.
"If the balance of opinion in Hungary were always determined by sober political calculation, this brave and independent people, isolated in the broad ocean of Slav populations, and comparatively insignificant in numbers, would remain constant to the conviction that its position can only be secured by the support of the German element in Austria and Germany.
But the Kossuth episode, and the suppression in Hungary itself of the German elements that remained loyal to the Empire, with other symptoms showed that among Hungarian hussars and lawyers self confidence is apt in critical moments to get the better of political calculation and self-control.
Outrage led many to reject Europe and turn towards the East in search of new friends and allies in a bid to revise the terms of the treaty and restore Hungarian power.
A more radical group of conservative, rightist people, sometimes even with an anti-Semitic hint propagated sharply anti-Western views and the superiority of Eastern culture, the necessity of a pro-Eastern policy, and development of the awareness of Turanic racialism among Hungarian people.” in: Uhalley, Stephen and Wu, Xiaoxin eds.
The claims of certain linguistic researchers regarding the Finno-Ugric relationship were therefore strongly rejected, because many found the idea that their nation was related to a peaceful farming people (the Finns) as insulting...
The extremist Turanians insisted on “ties of ancestry” with the Turkish peoples, Tibet, Japan and even the Sumerians, and held the view that Jesus was not a Jew but a Hungarian or a “noble of Parthia”.
[76] Ferenc Szálasi, the leader of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, believed in the existence of a genuine Turanian-Hungarian race (to the extent that his followers conducted anthropological surveys and collected skull measurements) which was a crucial aspect of the development of his ideology of "Hungarism".
(Azerbaijani, Bashkirs, Bulgarians, Buryats, Chuvash, Gagauz, Hungarians, Karachays, Karakalpaks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Manchus, Mongols, Nogai, Tatars, Turks, Turkmen, Uighurs, Üzbeks, Yakuts etc.)
