“Feeling of returning home”: myths and narratives in Hungarian Turanism and Kazakhstani Pan-Turkism in 2010-2025

Abstract

This study investigates the construction of pan-nationalisms of Turanism and pan-Turkism via reinforcement of myths and narratives in their discourse. Particularly, this research tackles the problem of divergence between the ideological foundations of Turanism and pan-Turkism and their discursive affinity. In this thesis, myths are understood not as falsified accounts but rather as conceptual phenomena that explain the social environment and selectively narrating the past, which becomes a model for the future. To resolve this, this study compares Turanism in Hungary and pan-Turkism in Kazakhstan and conducts qualitative abductive thematic analysis of 48 primary and secondary sources. Using the ethno-symbolist approach, the results show that Hungarian and Kazakhstani political actors mythologize ancestry, geographical origin, continuity, and ethnolinguistic predecessors, the Huns, to construct their respective pan-nationalisms. At the same time, narratives are somewhat different between Turanism in Hungary and pan-Turkism in Kazakhstan, except for the partial similarity in narratives on diplomacy. While Turanists in Hungary employ the narratives of exceptionalism, emancipation, and Other, pan-Turkists in Kazakhstan mostly rely on cultural narratives. This study also showed that myths and narratives legitimize international activities and domestic decision-making and serve as an inspiration for future actions. The semantic analysis demonstrated the prevalent similarity in myths and partial similarity in narratives that construct the respective pan-nationalism discursively. Based on the example of Turanism in Hungary and pan-Turkism in Kazakhstan, this indicates that the employment of common myths and not necessarily narratives can mutually affiliate pan-nationalisms despite their foundational differences.