What does “kordon” mean in Hungarian, and why is it political?

A “kordon” is a cordon — the barrier police put up to seal off an area. In Hungary the word is politically charged. In autumn 2006, after protests against PM Ferenc Gyurcsány, police declared Kossuth tér — the square in front of Parliament — an “operational area” and fenced it off. The cordon stood for about three and a half months, and “kordon” has meant “the state walling citizens out of their own public space” ever since.

The fence went up on 23 October 2006 and stayed until 2 February 2007, when Viktor Orbán and his Fidesz members took it down in roughly ten minutes — the famous “kordonbontás” (cordon-dismantling), staged as civil disobedience. The irony driving this clip: fifteen years later Orbán’s own government cordoned off the same area, so an opponent now throws the old symbol back at him — “a rendszerváltás utáni Magyarországon nincs helye kordonoknak” (in post-transition Hungary there is no place for cordons).