Filip Turek
Czech politician (born 1985)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Filip Turek (born 15 October 1985) is a Czech far-right[1] politician and former racing driver. He was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in the 2024 European Parliament election, as the lead candidate for the Přísaha and Motorists alliance. In the 2025 Czech parliamentary election, his party Motorists for Themselves was elected to parliament with 6.8% of the vote, and Turek became an MP.
Filip Turek | |
|---|---|
Official portrait, 2024 | |
| Member of the Chamber of Deputies | |
| Assumed office 4 October 2025 | |
| Member of the European Parliament for the Czech Republic | |
| In office 16 July 2024 – 4 October 2025 | |
| Succeeded by | Antonín Staněk |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 15 October 1985 |
| Party | Motorists for Themselves |
| Website | filipturek |
Early life and education
Turek was born on 15 October 1985 in Prague.[2] He received his bachelor degree in commercial law from the private, now-defunct College of Applied Law (Vysoká škola aplikovaného práva),[3] and his master's degree from the private University College Prague.[4] Turek has refused to give journalists access to his bachelor thesis, though he has provided pictures of the front page.[5] In his master's thesis, he wrote about the critical views of former Czech president Václav Klaus on American interventionism.[4][6]
Early career
From 2015 to 2017, Turek was a competitive racing driver, participating in 27 races.[7] The nature of Turek's racing successes has been the subject of debate. Data journalists Kateřina Mahdalová and Michal Škop reported that his wins were in categories where he either raced alone or with one or two opponents, including one amateur and one child, often racing in weaker cars, and Turek usually finished in one of the last or in last place.[7]
In 2015, Turek self-published Paraziti v nás (lit. 'Parasites inside Us'),[8] written by his mother, Eleni Turková, a book about alternative healing methods.[8] During the COVID-19 pandemic, one of his companies, Zapper-Club s.r.o., of which he was one of two executives until February 2022 and the sole partner until August 2023,[9] marketed uncertified "antivirus" home remedies to seniors and others. The Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority issued a warning against the company.[10] However, Turek himself denies any role in these activities.[11][12]
Politics
From 2022, Turek began commenting on politics on VOX TV's online program Po žních k Turkovi (lit. "To Turek after the harvest") as well as Xaver Live's Přisně tajné (lit. "Top Secret"). His positions included support for a minimal state, questioning of liberal values, and opposition to the euro, the European Green Deal, and the proposed ban on the production of cars with internal combustion engines.[13]
In the 2024 European Parliament election, he ran as a non-affiliated candidate for the populist party Přísaha, as the lead candidate for the Přísaha and Motorists alliance.[14] He was elected as an MEP with 152,196 preferential votes, the second-highest vote total of any candidate.[15]
In February 2025, Turek was reported to have met with representatives of the Iranian government for undisclosed reasons.[16]
On 30 May, Turek announced that he would lead Motorists for Themselves in the Central Bohemian Region in the 2025 Czech parliamentary election.[17] He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as an MP, with 20,232 preferential votes.[18]
On 7 January 2026, Czech President Petr Pavel refused to appoint Turek as environment minister.[19] In a letter to Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, Pavel said he must protect fundamental constitutional values, including the rejection of totalitarian ideologies, arguing that Turek's past statements and conduct cast doubt on his loyalty to those values, such as remarks that praised or downplayed Nazi Germany, and that Turek had repeatedly shown a lack of respect for the Czech legal order.[20] On 12 January, Turek was appointed government commissioner for climate policy.[21]
On 3 July 2026, Turek resigned as vice-chair of the Committee on European Affairs and was replaced by Zuzana Majerová.[22]
Controversies
Turek was investigated by the police in 2017 for threatening an employee of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Prague by placing a drawing of a gallows under the windscreen wiper of the employee's car and a bullet casing on the roof. He was recorded on camera during the act and confessed to the police. He defended his actions by stating that he was defending his girlfriend. The police eventually decided to treat the act as a misdemeanor, and Turek had to pay a penalty fine.[23]
During the 2024 European election campaign, several old photos of Turek were circulated online, including one where he wore a golden helmet with a symbol used by the former Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, one where he appeared to give a Nazi salute from a car, and one featuring a candlestick with a swastika. In a discussion on CNN Prima News, Turek stated that he was a collector and that he also had a knife used by SS soldiers, but he denied being a Nazi sympathizer. The Czech police opened an investigation into his gestures,[24] which was concluded in November 2024 due to the statute-barred case.[25]
Journalists have also uncovered further old photos of Turek, in which he was wearing a white racing helmet with a symbol used by the aerial-warfare branch of the Wehrmacht Luftwaffe and a fighter wing of the Luftwaffe called Jagdgeschwader 27.[26][7] Screenshots of his Facebook comments between 2013 and 2018 have been published, in which he referred to Adolf Hitler as a "golden daddy" and wrote that he always fills up with 88 litres of fuel—a veiled reference to the Nazi salute.[27]
On 17 April 2025, Turek posted a photo on Instagram showing his car's speedometer at over 200 km/h, claiming he was driving in Germany. Online users and later journalists identified the location as the D5 motorway in the Plzeň Region, where the speed limit is 130 km/h. The post inspired his followers to share similar speeding posts, some of which Turek reposted.[28] Turek was criticized by former minister of finance Miroslav Kalousek, former minister of science and research Marek Ženíšek,[29] MEP Tomáš Zdechovský, and MEP Danuše Nerudová[30][31] for promoting irresponsible and dangerous driving, as Turek refused to apologize or distance himself from his behavior. Following the criticism, Turek called on his followers to stop imitating his driving and stopped sharing their speeding posts.[31] During a debate on CNN Prima News, he defended himself, saying that he wanted to draw attention to a bad law with his action and that he had nothing to apologize for, while urging the public to drive carefully.[32]
In June 2025, the website Page Not Found reported that Turek had been accused by his ex-girlfriend in a criminal complaint of domestic violence, threatening with a firearm, and rape. Turek denied the accusations.[33] In May 2026, the police dismissed the case, due to the statute of limitations having expired. Turek's ex-girlfriend appealed the decision.[34]
In October 2025, the newspaper Deník N published an article with an archive of Facebook posts and comments by Turek, which he had later deleted, in which he repeatedly made openly racist, sexist, or homophobic statements, as well as numerous allusions to Hitler and Mussolini.[35][36] Some of his racist remarks targeted former American president Barack Obama and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.[37] Turek called for his opponents (including politicians, students, and businessman Petr Kellner) to be sent to gas chambers, and he threatened them with physical assault.[35][38][39] Turek denied authorship of the posts and called the article a deliberate attempt to discredit him.[36] The Czech police opened an investigation into his deleted posts.[40] The Czech anti-racist nonprofit ROMEA published an online petition, calling on the chair of ANO, Andrej Babiš, not to nominate Turek to the job of foreign minister, and on Czech President Petr Pavel to not appoint him.[41] The petition was signed by more than 8,000 people.[42] The chair of Motorists, Petr Macinka, announced that the party would file a criminal complaint against Deník N and the authors of the article.[43] On 14 October 2025, the Instagram account Štít demokracie published 42 pages of deleted posts from Turek's Facebook, with timestamps and URLs, which had been sent to them anonymously. The screenshots were taken in June 2024.[44][45][46] Turek's former friend Vojtěch Dobeš, a motoring journalist, later claimed responsibility for the screenshots.[47] Dobeš confirmed the authenticity of Turek's deleted posts to the police and handed them other, as-yet unpublished, posts.[48]
On 19 April 2026, the newspaper Blesk reported Turek's comments during an XTV online TV celebration event, in which he stated that "progressive, left-wing, sometimes green, and other kinds of parasites" were being removed in the four government ministries controlled by the Motorists.[49] He further referred to them as "vermin" and "rabble".[50] Czech-Moravian Confederation of Trade Unions leader Josef Středula called on Turek to apologise, stating that "such language has no place in politics".[51] STAN leader Vít Rakušan and former environment minister Petr Hladík warned that dehumanizing rhetoric echoes language used by the Nazis. PM Babiš, finance minister Alena Schillerová, and interior minister Lubomír Metnar stated that Turek's statements were unacceptable,[52] whereas AUTO leader Macinka defended Turek and said he had been referring to dubious activists who pose as experts.[50] On 25 April, during a debate on TV Nova, Turek apologized for his statement about parasites but denied that he had been talking about state employees. He also said he had been referring to activists and that his words had been misinterpreted.[53] Středula called his apology insufficient.[54]
On 24 April 2026, Turek used his Facebook account to accuse the nonprofit environmental organization Hnutí DUHA of preventing the construction of the Nové Heřminovy dam, and as a result, causing the deaths of several people. On 5 May, the group called on Turek to publicly apologise and sent a pre-trial notice for defamation.[55] On 24 June 2026, the group filed a lawsuit, as Turek had not apologised.[56]
Personal life
Turek is a collector of classic cars, especially the British brands Jaguar, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, and Bentley. Since 2006, he has been the chairman of the Czech Jaguar fan club, which he founded. In 2023, the club had only three members.[57] He also collects Nazi memorabilia.[24]
In 2024, Turek published the autobiography Hranatá legenda Filip Turek (lit. 'the square legend Filip Turek').[58][59]