international journal on minority and group rights 26 (2019) 436-460 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15718115-02603001 brill.com/ijgr Europeanisation as Legitimacy to Identify as a ‘National Minority’: The Turkish Community in Greece Tamara Hoch ecmi, Flensburg, Germany thoch@kabelmail.de Sebahattin Abdurrahman soas, University of London, London, uk sebahattin.abdurrahman@gmail.com Abstract The issue of national minorities has never ranked high on the European Union’s (eu’s) agenda. No legal or policy measures to protect Europe’s national minorities have been developed, reducing scholarly attention on the potential of Europeanisation of na- tional minority politics to the minimum. This article addresses this misconception and argues that Europeanisation of national minority politics does occur, however, not where originally expected. By shifting attention to a poorly studied area - minority actors and their activities at the eu level – the article illustrates how minority actors create own change, how they are influenced by their own ‘usages of Europe’ and how this process helps to advance our knowledge of Europeanisation of today’s national minority politics. Keywords national minorities – European Union (eu) – Europeanisation – usage of Europe – Turkish minority in Greece Downloaded from Brill.com08/29/2019 11:32:13AM via SOAS University of London