Challenges of achieving peace are as old as thoughts about it. Departing from a social movements perspective, my paper addresses the issue of mobilization around peace in militaristic societies, Israel and Turkey in comparison. By giving special attention to political opportunities, mobilizing structures and framing, this paper examines how peace movements persist in Israel and Turkey. My main question is: how can we explain the way activists shape their frames and alignments in relation to their different contexts? My argument is based on fieldwork done from Summer 2012 until Summer 2014 through different times in Istanbul, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. I look at interviews I conducted with activists from different groups like anarchists, feminists, and religious people. In order to show the difference in peace movements’ evolvement in two countries, I look at how activists adapt their framing and build alignments with other groups within the different political opportunities in Israel and Turkey. I discuss the different political environments in both countries, and ask how activists define the problem and their position and to what extent they build alliances with other groups. Moreover, by using different time frames, my aim is to demonstrate whether there have been any changes in their mobilization, and if yes in what way. Throughout the paper, I resort to the conceptual repertoire of evolution of peace activism and contextualize it in relation to the field of social movements. Through my interviews, I discovered that in contrast to Israel, in Turkey the development of mobilizing structures and framing are limited. In this respect, I make two main propositions: first, the difference can be observed in the messages activists want to communicate with general public. Second, the degree of building alliances is a reflection of the ideological criteria for cooperation with other groups. In conclusion, this paper sheds new light on the neglected issue of evolvement of peace movements. What I show is the role (un)favorable political opportunity structures play in the way frames and mobilizing structures are shaped by activists.