In recent years pro-Kurdish activists have brought numerous cases to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), precipitating major changes within domestic law in Turkey, and making grave human rights violations such as torture rare, if not unheard of. However, there has been no corresponding litigation in the ECHR around labor issues in Turkey despite unsafe working conditions, low wages and work without social security or benefits. What explains the differential access of the Kurdish and labor movements to the ECHR? Although European Union law has provided ample resources for legal mobilization against the state in terms of granting rights for both issues, why has the Kurdish movement been successful in making use of them, while the labor movement’s efforts to publicize rights violations through the ECHR remain marginal? The remedies provided by the ECHR for the Kurdish legal mobilization is further complicated by the limited effectiveness litigation provides for the real problems on the ground, specifically regarding group rights issues. For what kind of issues does the ECHR prove useful? What are the limits of rights framing through the ECHR? I suggest that ECHR’s responsiveness to certain rights claims have little to do with the activism around that issue. In this paper, I argue that the differential approach that the European Union (EU) has adopted towards human rights violations must be understood historically and be located within the context of the neoliberalization of the Turkish and EU economies as well as that of “rights frames.” I suggest that the ECHR’s neoliberal approach towards human rights prioritizes civil and political rights over socioeconomic rights; indeed the EU contributes to the exacerbation of violations of the latter. Second, the disregard for group rights claims vis-à-vis individual rights claims results in the failure to address structural problems behind these human rights violations in all issues. This paper seeks to explain and explore the issue sensitivity of the European human rights regime using court cases taken to the ECHR by the Kurdish and labor movements in Turkey, as well as EU Commission reports on Turkey. The results of this research contribute not only to studies on legal mobilization around human rights violations through international courts, but to those interested in understanding the effect of the EU on addressing human rights violations in Turkey as the accession negotiations between Turkey and the EU progress.