Enthusiasm For A Hereditary Enemy: Some Aspects of The Roots of Hungarian Turkophile Sentiments

This paper examines the changes that took place in the image of the Ottoman Turks in Hungary during the 19th century. Though the Ottoman attacks in the 15th and 16th centuries destroyed the medieval Kingdom of Hungary and the following 150 years of the Ottoman rule in Hungary had considerable negative consequences, by the end of the 19th century negative sentiments regarding the Turks shifted, and during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 there were enthusiastic pro-Turkish demonstrations in Budapest. The paper analyses the causes of this turn in Hungarian historical thinking and demonstrates, e.g. through the themes of the most popular historical paintings of the 19th century, that more recent anti-Habsburg and anti-Russian sentiments among the Hungarians led to active support for the Turks, if only in a peaceful way, since the foreign policy of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy remained neutral