By Erlan Benedis-Grab
Under Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s engagement with the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) served both practical and ideological purposes. Budapest used its observer status to deepen ties with Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, while presenting Hungary as a bridge between East and West and as a sovereign, eastern-rooted alternative to mainstream Europe. However, Prime Minister Peter Magyar has signaled a clear rhetorical break from this approach, placing Hungary’s future firmly within the European Union and rejecting Orbán’s foreign-policy symbolism. Yet a full retreat from the OTS is unlikely. As the EU expands its own engagement with Central Asia through energy, connectivity, and trade initiatives, a Tisza-led government would more likely reframe Hungary’s Turkic ties in pro-European and pragmatic terms, while subjecting Orbán-era agreements and patronage networks to greater scrutiny.
BACKGROUND:
New Hungarian PM Peter Magyar’s declaration that “Turkic councils may come and eastern dictators may go, but Hungarians envision their future in the European Union” has turned Hungary’s engagement with the OTS into a test case: will a Tisza-led government actually abandon Hungary’s Turkic and Central Asian ties, or preserve them while stripping away Fidesz’s ideological framing?
When Orbán’s government returned to power in the early 2010s, it introduced the strategy of “Eastern Opening.” Although officially framed around economic diversification, the policy also carried a political-symbolic function. As Orbán’s conflicts with Brussels deepened over rule of law, sovereignty, and migration issues, the Eastern Opening gave Budapest a way to signal that Hungary had options beyond the EU mainstream. The strategy initially centered on Russia and China, but over time Budapest expanded its outreach to Turkey, Azerbaijan, and other OTS states. In this sense, ties with these non-EU states became instruments of political marketing: they allowed Orbán to present Hungary as a state capable of maneuvering between power centers rather than simply aligning with Brussels.
These ties reached a new stage in 2018, when Hungary was granted observer status in the Organization of Turkic States (OTS). Hungary occupies an unusual position in the organization because, unlike its core members, Hungarians do not speak a language that is part of the Turkic family; rather, Hungarian is classified as a Finno-Ugric language.
Its observer status, therefore, reflects not linguistic or cultural ties but a political and historical narrative embraced by Orbán. That narrative was shaped in part by Fidesz's interpretation of Hungarian Turanism, a contested nationalist narrative that claims Hungarians are of Turkic origin and are closely linked to modern Turkic nation-states. For Orbán, this fits into a broader civilizational vision of Hungary as a sovereign, national, Christian-conservative state with historical ties to the East, standing apart from liberal EU political and cultural norms. In this framing, “sovereignty” means that the Hungarian nation has the right to define its own political and cultural path, even when that path conflicts with the EU; “Christian-conservative” refers to Fidesz’s presentation of Hungary as a defender of Christian identity against liberal values.
Hungary gained further prominence in 2025, when it hosted an informal summit of the OTS in Budapest. The meeting placed special emphasis on Hungary’s role as a “meeting point between east and west”. The signed Budapest Declaration also aligned with several of Hungary’s priorities. It praised Hungarian efforts to develop relations between the OTS and the EU, called for political and security cooperation, emphasized energy corridors, and reaffirmed commitment to strengthening regional connectivity through the Middle Corridor. The Budapest summit represented the fullest institutional expression of Orbán’s eastward diplomatic agenda.
Hungary was neither a Turkic state nor a full OTS member, yet the summit placed Hungary in a central symbolic and diplomatic role within an organization whose identity Orbán had used to support his civilizational claims.
Beyond its ideological function, Eastern Opening also helped to provide the political framework for substantive, if limited, economic engagement in strategic sectors, including energy, finance, and infrastructure. Hungary’s outreach to OTS states reflected Budapest’s broader effort to diversify supply away from Russia, including through investment in Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz gas field, expanded cooperation with Kazakhstan’s KazMunayGas, and emerging Caspian green-energy infrastructure linking Azerbaijan with the Black Sea region.
This economic cooperation has also been visible in the financial sector. Hungary’s OTP Bank acquired a controlling stake in Uzbekistan’s Ipoteka Bank, giving a major Hungarian firm a direct institutional foothold in Central Asia. In Kyrgyzstan, Budapest helped establish a joint Hungarian-Kyrgyz Development Fund, with activities across manufacturing, mining and metallurgy, infrastructure, agriculture, trade, technology, and IT. Still, critics argue that the Eastern Opening never fundamentally shifted Hungary’s trade structure. Throughout Orbán’s tenure, Hungary’s imports from the EU have consistently been above a ⅔ share of the country’s total imports. Hungary’s engagement with the OTS also serves the interests of the organization’s member states. Budapest is valuable to them because it gives the organization a foothold inside both the EU and NATO. It also allows Turkic and Central Asian states to present their cooperation with Hungary as part of a broader European-facing agenda.
Magyar repeatedly used “Turkic councils” in the lead-up to the 2026 election to target one of the key elements of Orbán’s foreign policy strategy: the Eastern Opening, especially Budapest’s deepening energy, transport, trade, and diplomatic ties with Turkic and Central Asian states. By contrasting Hungary’s permanent future in the EU with the temporary character of “Turkic councils” and “eastern dictators,” Magyar framed the OTS less as a useful diplomatic channel than as evidence of Hungary’s drift away from Europe under Orbán.
Tisza’s program makes this critique explicit by rejecting Orbán's premise that Hungary should be a bridge between the east and the west. It declares that “Hungary’s place is in Europe; Hungary will no longer be a ferry-country”. The program also attacks the doctrine behind that posture, describing Orban's connectivity agenda as “currying favor back and forth” and as inadequate for the modern world. Most explicitly, it states “The Eastern and Southern Opening has brought neither prosperity nor security — only new dependencies and uncertainty. We choose the West instead of the East". Brussels interpreted Magyar’s victory in similar terms. Von der Leyen wrote that Hungary had “chosen Europe” and had returned to its “European path.”
Yet Magyar has not placed the same special emphasis on Hungary’s place in the Turkic world.The key issue, therefore, is not whether Magyar rejects Orbán’s symbolism, but whether he would dismantle the practical relationships built under Orbán.
IMPLICATIONS:
Magyar’s government would likely seek to distance Hungary from Orbán’s illiberal and civilizational framing of that engagement, but it would still inherit a set of diplomatic, energy, and financial ties that serve Hungarian interests.
Hungarian government-aligned institutions and publications repeatedly regarded ties as ideologically meaningful. The Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, Danube Institute, and the Hungarian Conservative linked Hungary’s OTS engagement to strategic goals such as energy, connectivity, and defense cooperation, based on the foundation of shared historical ties.
Orbán's language had antagonized Brussels in the past. In 2024, for example, the EU publicly stressed that Orbán’s participation in the informal OTS summit in Shusha was only bilateral and that Hungary’s EU Council presidency gave him no mandate to represent the EU. Additionally, over Turkey-related issues, Hungary had previously blocked an EU statement criticizing Turkey’s 2019 military operation in Syria, and later joined Turkey in delaying Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO. So, while Magyar is intent on rejecting Orbán’s ideological framing, a full retreat from pragmatic engagement appears unlikely. Turkey remains a fellow NATO member and an unavoidable actor in the Black Sea. Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan are also increasingly relevant to EU-Central Asia engagement, as the EU is trying to reduce its dependency on Russia.
In recent years, the EU has significantly expanded its engagement with Central Asia, especially after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since adopting its 2019 Central Asia strategy, the EU has moved from broad regional dialogue toward a more concrete agenda, driven by increased European interest in energy security, critical raw materials, and alternative transport corridors. High-level EU–Central Asia meetings in Astana in 2022 and Cholpon-Ata in 2023 were followed by the 2023 Joint Roadmap for Deepening Ties, which set out practical areas for cooperation. The first EU–Central Asia summit in Samarkand in April 2025 then upgraded relations to a strategic partnership, a crucial milestone for EU-CA relations. What Magyar may do, however, is put institutional pressure on individual agreements between Hungary and Central Asian states. Anti-corruption and accountability for Orbán-era patronage are central to Tisza’s political agenda, and some of Hungary’s Central Asian deals were developed within the broader environment of state capture that characterized Orbán’s rule.
For example, OTP’s (Nationwide Savings Bank) acquisition of Uzbekistan’s Ipoteka Bank and MOL’s (Hungarian Oil and Gas Public) strategic cooperation with Kazakhstan’s KazMunayGas. OTP is formally private, but its CEO, Sándor Csányi, is widely viewed as close to Orbán. Likewise, MOL, though publicly listed, remains exposed to state influence: Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), Orbán’s key ideological institution, received a 10 percent stake in MOL, and chairman Zsolt Hernádi has also maintained close ties to Orbán. Magyar’s meeting with Hernádi and his criticism of these links suggest that a Tisza government would put these arrangements under state scrutiny. Many partnerships may survive, but the Orbán-linked networks that shaped some OTS ties would likely weaken.
CONCLUSIONS:
Hungary’s engagement with the Turkic world is therefore unlikely to disappear under a Tisza-led government, but its meaning would likely change. Under Orbán, the OTS served both practical and ideological purposes: it opened channels in energy, finance, and diplomacy, while also reinforcing Fidesz’s civilizational narrative of Hungary as an eastern-rooted, sovereign alternative to liberal Europe.
Thus, Magyar’s statements on Hungary’s European future signal a rhetorical break. Hungary’s trade with OTS states remains limited, but selected ties in energy, banking, and connectivity still serve strategic interests that the new government will be eager to leverage. In that sense, the door is closing on Hungary’s “Eastern Opening”. Hungary’s Turkic policy is poised to shift from identity politics towards a more even-handed pro-European agenda.
AUTHOR’S BIO:
Erlan Benedis-Grab is a researcher at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute.