This paper focuses on the emergence of children as a legal category and the subject of human rights in Turkey. The rights bearing child is a product of Turkey’s accession into the European Union, which requires the rearrangement of the country’s political and governmental order according to “European standards.” In this paper, I draw on ethnographic research conducted between 2007-2009 alongside state officials and government workers who were being trained on children’s rights and the juvenile justice system. The training program was in line with Turkey’s National Program for Action, specifically the 2005 Child Protection Law, which oversees the establishment of a separate judicial and correctional system for “children who come in contact with the law.” It targeted a wide range of state officials (security forces, the judiciary, healthcare specialists and social workers) who would be working with children (in children’s courts, juvenile police centers, corrective facilities etc.) with an aim to train them on children’s rights and the new code of law. Based on an analysis of the data that I gathered through participant observation in the training seminars and interviews with trainers and trainees, I show that the emergence of the category of children as the subject of rights is embedded in controversial discussions and competing ideas about who qualifies as a child and what should be considered human rights. I argue that the specific portrayal of children in line with the UNICEF model of the child in need of compassion narrows the category of rights bearing children. This model—which resonates with the official Turkish ideology that indexes children as the guardians of the national future who are in need of protection and guidance—reinforces the power of the state over the children of the nation. As such, it contrasts strikingly with the rights framework that tries to limit the power of institutions of authority in order to protect vulnerable subjects. The result is that the children who qualify to have rights emerge as those that are the passive victims of either child abuse or sexual harassment, while children who are victimized due to their class or ethnicity and who actively engage in ways to overcome their situation are excluded from the category of rights bearing children. I elucidate this point by showing how stereotypes of “pick pocketing Gypsy children” and “terrorist Kurdish children” were recurrent themes of discussion during juvenile justice trainings.