Viktor Orbán’s speech at the Hungarian-Turkish business forum held in Budapest on 24 February 2015

Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Excellency,

It is not easy for prime ministers to talk before members of the business community. Most of all because we all know – both you and we do – that business is done by businesspeople. It is a sad state of affairs if business is conducted by politicians. Politicians have a single duty: to create the conditions which enable you to strike good deals. In this respect, both Turkey and Hungary have done well in recent times. I hold President Erdoğan in the highest esteem; he is a dedicated friend, champion and pioneer of Turkish-Hungarian business relations, who declared his views on Turkish-Hungarian economic relations here, before you, a year ago.

If you will allow me, I shall not talk about business, as you know much more about it; I would rather tell you what prime ministers do when they meet. Prime ministers usually do two things on these occasions. First of all, they make decisions. I shall now briefly outline these. We decided that the Hungarian Eximbank will open a representation in Istanbul. We decided to open a credit line worth USD 170 million for the cooperation of small and medium-sized businesses, in order to facilitate and promote Turkish-Hungarian business cooperation. We decided to set up a USD 50 million investment with USD 25 million from each party to boost Turkish-Hungarian economic cooperation. We decided to help businesses from our two countries cooperate in the markets of third countries. In this regard we already have a good example: MOL is cooperating with a large Turkish corporation in Russia in the production of oil. We also have an agreement to extend their activities to the Black Sea, and we shall both encourage others to make similar it common practice to launch joint operations in third countries. We have changed the rules regarding visa procedures. We confirmed that there are 768 Turkish university students in Hungary now – 768!; and the Hungarian state offers 150 scholarship grants annually; we pay young Turkish people to come here and study in our universities. And today the two capitals have also come to another agreement: to be more precise, Istanbul and Budapest have agreed to launch joint city operation programmes.

Ladies and Gentlemen, when two prime ministers meet or when the Turkish and Hungarian prime ministers meet, one of the things we do is make decisions. I have just outlined these here. The other thing we do is to engage in an exercise of joint thinking. This is a rare privilege. You cannot engage in this exercise with every prime minister as in politics – just as in business – you need an air of friendship and trust to be able to talk to each other openly. I can inform you that this air of trust and friendship exists between the Hungarian prime minister and the Turkish prime minister – between Turkey and Hungary. And therefore we are able to consider our future together. We talked about a great many things; I would just like to share two of them with you. The first is that your country is a large one, and Hungary is small compared with your country. Hungary is a member of the European Union, while you are outside. You have achieved outstanding economic results over the past ten years, while Hungary has only just started finding its feet. It is therefore reasonable for Hungarians to ask: what is the reason for Turkey’s success? What can we learn from you? You see, this is a very dangerous question, because the trend in the West today is that westerners should only learn from westerners, and if someone dares to say that one can also learn something from people in the East, he will immediately be dismissed in the press as a prime minister not to be trusted as far as democracy is concerned. This is how I am treated most of the time. However, I take the view that if a continent like ours – Europe – is economically unsuccessful, and at this point in time, our problems outnumber our achievements, then it is wise to ask the question: why is someone else successful? There is no shame at all in learning from others, in finding out whether there is something there that they do better than we do, or something that we could adopt which could make us successful as well. I am convinced that that there is something behind Turkey’s economic success which is much more than the economy itself: this is the question of demography. I am convinced that the immense respect the Turkish people have for the family, the very fact that family values come first, contributes to the Turkish economy’s resounding success. I am convinced that there is a correlation between the fact that today Turkey is Eurasia’s youngest state and the fact that it has one of the most successful economies. We believe that there is a correlation between these two things, and therefore today we have also jointly considered what it is that we could learn on issues of family policy. I questioned the Prime Minister in detail on how Turkey has succeeded in placing the family at the centre of attention in policy, and not only in private life. What mechanisms and methods does the Turkish government employ to encourage Turkish people in work to have children – to have careers and raise children at the same time? This is the biggest puzzle to be solved. The whole modern world is struggling with this question, while Turkey has undeniable results – results that perhaps no one else in the rest of the world can match. So I thank you for your wisdom and the information and advice given in this area.

Another thing we talked about at length today is the message in the sentence with which the Honourable Prime Minister opened his press conference. He said we are two countries which do not want tensions in Eurasia. This sounds like a simple statement. It seems so easy to say. But it has special significance if it is stated in the realm of politics in today’s world. My experience is, Ladies and Gentlemen, that we in Europe and in the West still haven’t fully succeeded in abandoning the cold-war mentality. We still keep thinking in terms of East or West, one or the other. And Europe and the West have been very slow in learning that this is the wrong question. The question for the future is how East and West will be able to cooperate effectively, and how the European Union will be able to cooperate with countries outside its borders – including Turkey, which is eager to gain admission. If we are unable to answer these questions, we shall be unable to explore the fantastic opportunity that is inherent in cooperation between East and West. I am grateful to the Honourable Prime Minister for the thought with which he came to Hungary, and he has confirmed our belief that we should not think in terms of “or” but in terms of “and”. I wish to thank the Honourable Prime Minister and the Turkish government for pursuing a policy which allows Hungary to find its own place; a policy for which the underlying concept is centred on cooperation: cooperation between East and West.

Your Excellency,

I sincerely hope that you have felt at ease in our country. I sincerely hope that you too are pleased with our agreements. I sincerely hope that members of the business community, too, will perceive that the present visit of their prime minister to Hungary has lent still further impetus to Turkish-Hungarian economic cooperation.

Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister.

We send our greetings to the Honourable President, and God bless Turkey!