Hungarian Conservative

Hungarians will continue to provide assistance to Turkish people affected by the recent earthquake, Katalin Novák, President of Hungary said at a joint press conference held in Ankara on Wednesday with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, following their meeting.

‘We believe in connectivity, relationships, and cooperation based on mutual respect. I think the Organization of Turkic States is an excellent example of all this because it includes Caucasians, Central Asians, and Europeans, and we all know how to cooperate with respect,’ Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told the audience at an event in Ankara, Turkey.

Should search and rescue forces again be dispatched by Budapest for humanitarian relief efforts in ravaged Turkey, they would face dangerous terrain, and not just from the unstable tectonic plates. The Hungarians have to navigate through an exceptionally dangerous geopolitical landscape, but they do have cards to play.

‘For some victims—those killed in the initial impact at 4 a.m. in their homes and businesses—both the story of the disaster and of their lives ended there. For at least 120,000 that survived with injury, or for millions more who escaped bodily harm but are forced to live on with mental scars, shattered livelihoods, or broken families, this quake was merely the opening chapter of a nightmarish story that continues to this day.’

‘The Hungarian people help both domestically and abroad, as we saw during the coronavirus pandemic, in the case of refugees from Ukraine, and now in Turkey,’ Defence Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky said.