An issue that may sound very familiar to many of our readers, but especially those who are American, has seemingly been put to rest here in Hungary. In the US, progressive activists have been on a ‘rampage’ to clear any monument from public spaces that they deem problematic, usually citing racism. Here in Hungary, the statue of the mythical Turul bird has come into the crosshairs of similar efforts.
The structure in question is located in the 12th district of Budapest, where a new mayor was elected this year. Gergely Kovács from the joke party Two-Tailed Dog Party made it one of his first initiatives in office to have the statue removed from where it stands now.
The Turul statue was unveiled in 2005. It serves as a commemoration of Hungarian soldiers fallen during World War II. The controversy comes from the fact that some of the names inscribed on the monument were associated with the Arrow Cross Party, a Nazi puppet party that was briefly in power in Hungary between 1944 and 1945. Hungary was fighting on the Axis side in World War II, so such problems are bound to come up when paying homage to the fallen soldiers. Also, the Arrow Cross movement expropriated the ancient avian symbol, attaching a lasting negative connotation to it.
For this reason, there have been calls for the statue’s removal since 2009, but the Fidesz municipal leadership of the district has always chosen to keep it intact (albeit also suggesting the renaming of the statue, detaching from it its original WWII memorial function). This time, however, Fidesz is no longer in power there.
So, it was Minister of Construction and Transportation János Lázár who stepped in and made a decision on the national government level. In a Facebook post, he announced that he is placing the Turul statue under historic monument protection.
‘The Turul stays! The memorial in the 12th district, which pays tribute to the military and civilian victims of World War II, has been the focus of political controversy almost since its inauguration. But this should not be a reason to condemn a national symbol and a work of art to destruction. As the minister responsible for cultural heritage, one of my most important tasks is to protect our heritage. Today I have ordered the Turul statue to be placed under historical monument protection,’ he wrote on his social media page.
Sites under historical monument protection cannot be altered, let alone removed, even by the property owners under Hungarian law.
Mayor Kovács responded in a Facebook post of his own. Staying true to the nature of his organization, a joke party, he did so in a flippant tone, saying: ‘This must be some kind of mistake, the Minister must have wanted to put [the Hungarian national railway company] MÁV under historic monument protection. We are hereby announcing a statue contest with the title “János Lázár meets historical monument protection”’. Kovács was referring to the recent scandals surrounding MÁV, with many blaming the minister for a lack of progress in the modernization and general rehauling of the state railways.
It was not only Gergely Kovács who wanted to score political points exploiting the statue controversy. Radical right-wing opposition party Mi Hazánk (Our Homeland) held their 23 October rally near the statue, merging the commemoration of the revolution with a demonstration for the statue—wisely rendered obsolete by the ministerial order issued on 21 October.
While the sensitivities around the monument must be acknowledged, it needs to be recognized that the Turul symbol is in no way associated with Nazism or fascism in the Hungarian people’s minds.
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