Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan met Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban at the "Hungary-Turkey Working Forum" in Budapest on Thursday. Masses met Erdoğan with a protest against the Turkish genocidal campaign seeking to invade North and East Syria which is marked by grave war crimes in which civilians are directly and brutally targeted.

The demonstrators displayed photos of victims of Turkey’s and gangs’ attacks, including Kurdish politician Havrin Khalaf, who was mistreated and murdered by Islamists.

Hungary supports the Turkish invasion campaign against Rojava that started on 9 October. The mayor of Budapest, Gergely Karácsony, has a different opinion from that of the government. During a solidarity demonstration for Rojava last week, he hoisted a Kurdish flag at the town hall of the Hungarian capital.

Hungarian philosopher and politician Gâspâr Miklôs Tamâs, among others, has called for a protest against Erdoğan. "The governments who have left you in the lurch, will pay for it: the hour of reckoning is nigh,” he said last week in a commentary for ANF.

Hungary Today reported that opposition party Momentum’s youth organization, TizenX (TeenX) put up posters in Budapest, as well as banners in the morning, protesting against the President’s Budapest visit, while the Democratic Coalition (DK) also printed pictures of “Syrian victims, who died because of the policy of the president.”

Momentum’s statement said that the posters and stickers with the caption “Child murderer Erdoğan!” are “drawing attention to the fact that many Kurdish civilians, including many children, have already died in the Turkish President’s war in Northern Syria. At the same time, while Orbán’s main aim is to defend Christianity, he doesn’t protect the Kurdish Christians living there, but supports a war against them.”

On Thursday morning, DK also organized a protest. They printed out images of Syrian victims who they believe have died as a result of the Turkish President’s policies. According to the party’s statement, they intended to place the signs on light poles on Andrássy Avenue so that the Turkish president could see them as the convoy passed, but the police prevented the activists from doing so. DK spokesman Balázs Barkóczi said that the party “finds it shameful that Hungary has become the gateway for half-Asian dictators, and we are ashamed that a war criminal will be free to walk around Budapest in 2019.”

Green opposition LMP has also called on the government “to stop supporting war crimes.” Deputy group leader Antal Csárdi said that by maintaining “close and manifestly friendly” relations with Erdogan, Hungary has given its tacit approval to the war crimes that Turkey has committed, adding that this makes Hungary “an accomplice to ethnic cleansing and genocide.”

In the name of opposition party Párbeszéd, Dávid Doros, Deputy Mayor for Climate Protection and Development, lit a candle “in solidarity with the Kurds and Turks suppressed by Erdogan” on Wednesday night.