The Turul

The turul is a mythical bird from Hungarian tradition, a giant bird of prey that plays the role of divine messenger and ancestor in the origin stories of the Hungarian people. It is almost always depicted as a falcon, although some artists have given it the look of an eagle, and in art it usually appears with its wings spread wide, sometimes wearing a crown and often holding a sword in its talons. In old Hungarian, turul was the name of a particular kind of falcon, and the word most likely comes from Turkic languages, where toğrul or toġrïl meant a medium to large bird of prey. Scholars have linked the legendary bird to several real species, including the goshawk and the gyrfalcon, but the most popular candidate is the saker falcon, a powerful hunter of the Eurasian steppes that the nomadic ancestors of the Hungarians knew well and used for falconry. The turul is not a real animal, but it is the animal most closely tied to Hungary's identity.

The best known turul story is told in the Gesta Hungarorum, a Latin chronicle written around 1200 to 1230 by an unknown author known as Anonymus. According to the chronicle, while Emese, the wife of the chieftain Ügyek, was pregnant, a divine vision came to her in a dream in the form of a falcon, which seemed to make her pregnant. In the dream a rushing stream sprang from her womb and grew into a great river, but not in her own land, and this was read as a prophecy that glorious kings would come from her line. Her son was named Álmos, from the Hungarian word álom, dream, so his name can be understood as the dreamt one. Álmos led the Hungarian tribes westward, and his son Árpád completed the conquest of the Carpathian Basin at the end of the ninth century. The river growing in a foreign land was taken to mean the new homeland. Later retellings of the legend add that turul birds flew ahead of the migrating Hungarians and showed them the way to their new homeland.

Because of Emese's dream, the Árpád dynasty, which ruled Hungary from the conquest of the Carpathian Basin until 1301, was also called the Turul dynasty. For nomadic peoples of the steppe, a bird of prey as a clan ancestor was a familiar idea, and historians see the turul as a totem, a sacred animal from which the ruling family claimed its origin and its right to rule. Medieval chroniclers also linked the bird to Attila the Hun, whom they presented as an ancestor of the Hungarian kings: according to the chronicles, Attila carried a crowned falcon on his shield and banner, and the Hungarians used it as their military emblem until the time of Prince Géza in the tenth century. After the country became Christian under Géza's son, King Stephen I, the turul faded from official symbols, but it survived in legends and chronicles and returned with force in the nineteenth century, when Hungarian nationalism looked to the country's pagan origins for symbols.

The turul became a favorite subject of public art around 1896, when Hungary celebrated the thousandth anniversary of the Magyar conquest. Bronze turul birds were placed on top of the pillars of the new Liberty Bridge in Budapest, opened that year, where they still perch today with their wings spread over the Danube. The most visited statue stands at Buda Castle: created by the sculptor Gyula Donáth in the early twentieth century, it shows a huge turul clutching a sword, perched on the railing above the Danube beside the Habsburg Gate, and it is one of the most photographed spots in Budapest. It was restored and returned to its place in 2021. The largest of all is in Tatabánya, a city west of Budapest. Built in 1907 on a hilltop, it has a wingspan of about 15 meters and is considered the largest bird statue in Europe. Smaller turul figures can be found on memorials, gates and public buildings across Hungary and in Hungarian communities in neighboring countries.

Hungary has no national animal chosen by law, but the turul is the one most often named as its national animal. No other creature is so closely tied to the story of the Hungarian nation, and the bird appears in many official emblems today, including those of the Hungarian Defence Forces, the Counter Terrorism Centre and the Constitution Protection Office, the country's domestic intelligence service. It is also used by schools, sports clubs and businesses, and it is a popular motif in art and crafts. Because the turul is a myth, Hungarians also point to real animals as national symbols. The saker falcon is often described as the real bird behind the legend, and in 2004 the Hungarian parliament passed a resolution recognizing native Hungarian animal breeds as part of the national heritage; among the best known are the Hungarian grey cattle, the Mangalica pig and the vizsla. So while the turul is the symbolic national animal, Hungary's national pride also includes these living animals.

If the turul had a living model, it was most likely the saker falcon, a large falcon of open grasslands that ranges from central Europe across the steppes of Central Asia to Mongolia and China. Sakers are powerful hunters that take ground squirrels and birds with fast, low attacks, and they have been prized in falconry for thousands of years, including by the nomadic peoples from whom the Hungarians descend. Today the real bird is in trouble. The IUCN lists the saker falcon as Endangered, after steep declines driven by the loss of steppe habitat, electrocution on power lines, poisoning and illegal trapping for falconry. Hungary, however, is a success story. The saker almost disappeared from the country in the 1980s, but conservation work, including hundreds of artificial nest boxes fitted on high voltage pylons, brought it back, and the Hungarian population was estimated at 212 to 235 pairs in 2025. Most of them now nest in boxes on pylons.

Like many national symbols, the turul has not always been used in harmless ways. Between the two world wars, a nationalist student federation called the Turul Association took its name and became known for antisemitic campaigns at Hungarian universities, and during the twentieth century far right movements adopted the bird as an emblem. Because of this history, the turul still divides opinion. For many Hungarians it is simply an ancient symbol of the nation's origins, found on bridges, castles and military badges, while others see in it echoes of exclusion and extremism. The debate became especially visible in 2005, when a turul memorial to World War II dead was unveiled in Budapest's 12th district: critics objected because some of the names honored on it were linked to the Arrow Cross, the fascist party that briefly ruled Hungary in 1944 and 1945. A mythical bird from a medieval dream can still carry very different meanings today.