As is known, on Wednesday Katalin Novák was welcomed with anti-Hungarian protests The demonstration was organized by the extreme anti-Hungarian, chauvinist Calea Neamului (The Way of the Nation) and its leader, Mihai Tîrnoveanu. Mandiner contacted Zsolt Pászkán, an expert at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and Trade, to find out who the organizers of Wednesday's incident really are.
The expert said that the Nemzet Útja Egyesület was founded in Brasov around 2017, and it is headed by Mihai Tirnoveanu, a local dentist. The organism should not be imagined as a unified block, but actually a cooperation of loosely connected cells. They soon drew attention to themselves with their anti-Hungarian actions: they organized anti-Hungarian marches in Székelyföld settlements, similar to what the anti-Hungarian organizations there did in Transcarpathia.
The network is partly orthodox, it is more on the left side of the political spectrum, but at the same time, anti-Hungarianism also appears markedly - explained Zsolt Pászkán.
The current case in Nagykároly is also highlighted by the fact that the National Liberal Party in the settlement has an anti-Hungarian, chauvinist core, which thrives on anti-Hungarianism due to its political failures, and also maintains a publication inciting against the local Hungarians, which regularly tries to incite the the Romanianness of the settlement.
Not with great success, as you can see, since most of the participants in Wednesday's demonstration were not from Nagykárol, but the demonstration had to be filled with "imported protesters", said Pászkán. Tensions have been building up in the settlement since March 16, when they learned about the statue's unveiling. Tirnoveanu's organization is typically one that connects to such events.
According to the expert, the demonstration was pointless because neither Katalin Novák nor any other serious politician has made territorial demands against Romania in the last thirty years. In contrast, Romanian politicians use various irredentist slogans (especially lately) against Moldova, Ukraine, and even Hungary. According to Pászkán, they try to divert attention from this by inciting against the Hungarians. George Simion recently stated that "Romania should claim the territory from the Dniester to the Tisza".
At the same time, Zsolt Pászkán warned that we should always be careful not to settle such cases with a simple shrug of the shoulders, like the one in Nagykároly. Because " you never know when and how the situation will deteriorate".
He reminded that in Ukraine, Azov, Carpathian Sich and other chauvinist organizations took up arms against various minorities more than once, as they did in Donbass before the war. But serious atrocities also took place in Transcarpathia: the burning of Hungarian institutions, or the intimidation of leading local Hungarian politicians. So this should never be taken lightly, even if now only a handful of people actually participate in these movements, he said.
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Photo: Nándor Veres
