This study explores the evolution of Turkey’s grass-roots human rights movement over a period of three decades, paying particularly close attention to inter-organizational relations between Islamist and secular organizations. It asks, why and under what conditions did seemingly opposed organizations develop into an ideologically and socially more cohesive human rights movement? Which, if any, conflicting human rights perspectives blocked cooperation between Islamists and secularists, and how were these differences reconciled? Thus, the main goals of this research project were (1) to analyze the similarities and differences in the way Islam-rooted and secular organizations engaged human rights norms and articulated their claims, and (2) to investigate the social implications of the Islam-secular divide by examining inter-organizational relations within the movement.

I explore areas of convergence and divergence especially among Islam-rooted and secular organizations by analyzing different organizations’ approaches to four specific issues: the death penalty, torture, Kurdish rights, and the headscarf ban. In addition, I analyze the factors that shaped each organization’s particular articulation of rights claims, as well as the factors that enabled and constrained coalition-building among disparate organizations.

The study concludes that ideas concerning universal human rights—ideas rooted in international human rights norms and Islamic norms of justice—provided the language for local groups to articulate their grievances and the tools to devise solutions for Turkey’s human rights problem. More importantly, once grievances were expressed in terms of universal rights, these similar articulations formed the ideational building blocks that were used by organization leaders to transcend past models of advocacy work based on in-group solidarity. Additionally, discourses on civil society and democratization, as well as the shared experience of being political outsiders and victims of state abuse were also used by organization leaders to facilitate positive relations between disparate Islam-rooted and non-religious organizations. Over time, a movement collective identity emerged and crystallized around the idea of non-partisan human rights activism, which sustained movement cohesion even during periods of intense polarization between Islamists and secularists in Turkish society.