Turanism (or Turanianism) asserts the common descent and future greatness of the Ural-Altaic peoples. In Hungary, Turanism flourished in the first half of the 20th century and proclaimed the Hungarians' shared ancestry with, and cultural proximity to, the peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia; in Turkey, it provided an ethnic alternative to the dynastic/religious framework of the Ottoman Empire.

It was the Indo-Europeanist Max Müller who in 1861 first used the term “Turanian” (used in Ancient Persian to denote non-Iranian neighbours to the north) to denote a putative non-Indo-European, non-Semitic language family vaguely rooted east of the Caspian Sea. Although the theory was eventually proved wrong, his assumption and coinage persisted, and gained currency in linguistics and, soon after, anthropology and ethnography as the designation of Ural-Altaic peoples. The group of “Turanian” peoples was gradually expanded to include a vast number of groups, among them Finno-Ugric, Samoyedic, Turkic, Mongolian, Manju-Tunguz, Chinese, Japanese, Malayan, Tibetan, Tamil, as well as extinct groups such as the Sumerian, Assyrian, Hittite, Etruscan, and Scythian.

Turanism as a consciousness-raising ideology was inspired by, and belonged to, 19th-century “pan-ideologies” such as Pan-Slavism and Pan-Celticism. It was first championed in Finland by the prominent philologist and ethnologist Matthias Alexander Castrén (1813–1852), but remained marginal there. It was more influential in Turkey, although there it was submerged in Pan-Turkism (which specifically proclaimed ethnic kinship between Ottoman Turks and the Turkic peoples under Russian rule).

Turanism gained its strongest resonance in Hungary, where Magyars felt threatened by both Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism and ethnically isolated in Europe. Here, the theory that the Hungarian language was related to Turkish obtained a prominent position in linguistics in the second half of the 19th century. The long, passionate, and highly publicized struggle between this idea and its antagonist, Finno-Ugrism, which denied such common origin, is known as the “Turkic-Ugric linguistic war”. Comparative linguists József Budenz and Pál Hunfalvy advocated Finno-Ugrism, while the emblematic Turkic champion was the Orientalist Ármin Vámbéry (1832–1913), an ardent supporter of Turanism. Of course this linguistic crux was not only – or even primarily – an academic one. Choosing sides entailed taking a political and ideological stance, a Turkic(-Hunnish) origin being considered more glamorous and heroic. Nonetheless, by the end of the century the Finno-Ugric position had carried the day. Even so, the idea of Turkic ancestry did not disappear from public opinion, and in the wider cultural sphere Turanism as a social and political movement continued to advocate the material and spiritual renaissance of all Turanian peoples.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the notion of a Turanian appurtenance was diffused across the Hungarian press, in literary works, and even in schoolbooks. The first notable advocate of Turanism in Hungary was Alajos Pajkert, minister of agriculture. In 1910, the “Hungarian Turanian Society” was formed in Budapest (with a branch opening in Istanbul a year later), on the model of the British Asiatic Society and the Deutsche Asiatische Gesellschaft. Among its associates were many prominent figures: the expeditioner Béla Széchenyi, Prime Minister and first Hungarian Minister of the Republic Mihály Károlyi, the geographer Jenő Cholnoky, and the Orientalist Ignác Goldziher. The president of the Society was the geographer and later Prime Minister Pál Teleki. (Almost all Hungarian Prime Ministers of the era were formally members of the Turanian Society.) Their declared aim was to study the culture, science, and economy of Hungary’s Asian relatives, to harmonize their interests, and to eventually bind all Turanic peoples into a single powerful alliance. The Society circulated its own journal, Turan. It set up student exchange programs, organized language courses and expeditions, and spearheaded the establishment of bi-national friendship associations. Although its statutes stated the Society to be apolitical, it was evident from the very beginning that cultural and scientific aspects were complemented by, if not subordinated to, politics. Hungarians, as the most Western(ized) Turanian people, midway between Europe and Asia, were to play a key role in the rise of Turan by mediating between East and West, and by assuming leadership in the coming economic, cultural, and political upsurge.

In 1916 the Turanian Society was renamed the “Hungarian Oriental Cultural Centre”. The writer and politician Gyula Pekár became its president and Archduke Josef Ferdinand its patron. State-subsidized programmes aiming to cultivate relations with the Turkish and Bulgarian brother-nations were launched. In 1920 its scientific branch was reorganized into a separate Society (named after the renowned Tibetologist Sándor Kőrösi Csoma); among its officials we find the linguist József Szinnyei, historian and politician Bálint Hóman, as well as Turkologist Gyula Németh. The scientific journal of the new association, the Kőrösi Csoma Archive, was the continuation of Turan. In the same year, Jenő Cholnoky and expeditioner Benedek Baráthosi Balogh established the more radical “Hungarian Turanian Alliance”, which circulated its own periodical, tellingly entitled East.

From the 1920s onwards, Turanist publications became more eccentric and radical. In the aftermath of the traumatic Treaty of Trianon, Turanism took an anti-European and revisionist turn and became a breeding-ground for illusions of grandeur and imperialist aspirations. If Attila’s descendants, so it was thought, were to restore a Greater Hungary and lead a mighty empire, their material and spiritual regeneration required a rejection of the corrupt, decadent, and treacherous West and a reconnection with their authentic roots in the East. Modern science was also mobilized: phrenological examinations and genetic tests were conducted in order to prove that Magyars belonged to the feisty Turanian breed.

Because of its ethnic-nationalist character, its palingenetic elements, and its warrior ethos, Turanism became central to the Hungarian version of Fascism propagated by Ferenc Szálasi. Unsurprisingly, after 1945 Turanism was largely discredited and actively persecuted; but after the collapse of Communism, it experienced a certain revival. Today it is a key point in the ideology of the ultranationalist “Movement for a Better Hungary” (Jobbik). Its appeal continues to be marginal, however, and its tenets are generally seen as eccentric at best.