Mobilizations for Western Thrace and Cyprus in Contemporary Turkey: From the Far Right to the Lexicon of Human Rights.

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This article emphasizes the politicization of the Western Thrace Turks issue: first its amendment into a public issue in the Turkish national area as a “lost territory” of the Ottoman Empire, and later at the European level according to the political frame of the protection of “ethnic minorities”. The article first describes how state-approved organizations succeeded in the 1960-70s in setting the Western Thrace issue in Turkey's political agenda as a part of the “national struggle” (millî dava), thanks to their leaders' individual commitment in far rightist organizations promoting the Cyprus issue. The second part deals with these state-approved organisations' strategy of internationalisation, both from an empirical and theoretical point of view. At the end of the 1980s there was a shift from a strategy directed to the Muslim world to a Europe-oriented one, as human rights norms became prevailing in international relations.The nature of this movement challenges the conventional approach to social movements, which opposes “ordinary people” to either authorities or “powerful opponents” (Tarrow 1998). Further, at least since the beginning of the 1990s and the successful use of the European resource, there have been no more conflicting interactions with neither state authorities nor opponents. It seems more appropriate to consider it an advocacy coalition appropriating the lexicon of human rights, in which NGOs or state administrations can be involved as well.