ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the use of human rights discourse in a local struggle against the commodification of water and investigates the operational importance and limits of the concept of the 'right to water' as a new human right 'under construction' for local mobilization and resistance against the construction of hydroelectric power plants (HPPs) in Turkey. It describes that human rights are constituted by and through struggle about ideas and values. The chapter explains the concurrent, often discordant, legal texts adopted or still under discussion within different intergovernmental organizations relating the definition of the scope of right to water as an individual or collective right or with an ecological perspective in order to overcome the anthropocentrism of human rights discourse. It also discusses the tactical and strategical functions of the right to water in the anti-HPPs movement in Turkey. The chapter explores that legal concepts in general, and human rights concepts in particular, bear a counter-hegemonic potential.
