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La prochaine séance du séminaire "Transferts culturels" aura lieu levendredi 12 janvier de 9h30 à 12h30 au 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 PARIS,  salleA.DjebarL’ELABORATION TRANSNATIONALE DU SYSTEME UNIVERSITAIRETURC Feza Günergun (Istanbul) : Transferring knowledge for the building ofmodern Turkey. A survey of students sent to French universities prior toWorld War IIFor many centuries, Turkey witnessed the transmission of scientific ortechnical knowledge from Eastern and Western cultures. During the earlycenturies (14th-17th c.) of the Ottoman rule, madrasa students eager toimprove their knowledge would travel to the Middle East and Central Asia andstudy with renowned Islamic scholars. Travels made within areas of similarcultural background were rather intense. As for the technical knowledge(i.e.gun casting, shipbuilding) needed by the military, this was procuredfrom technicians and labour force recruited or hired mainly from Europeancountries where different cultures and creeds prevailed. Initiallynon-MuslimOttoman subjects, supported by their families, left for Europe tostudy sciences (mostly medicine) from 17th century on. The Ottomangovernmentwould send “students” who were graduates of Ottomaneducationalinstitutions to European universities and military institutionsafter the 1830’s. Although these early trainees and those sent in thefollowing years contributed to teach modern sciences in Ottomaninstitutions,their efforts would fall short due to various reasons.The foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and the followingmodernisation program initiated by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was deeplyWest-oriented. The modern educational institutions to be created orreformed,the new industrial plants to be set throughout the country neededlarge number of well- trained staff. Following Atatürk’s instructions,thedecision of sending students to Europe was already decided in 1923 at theIzmir Economy Congress and included in the Government’s Program pronouncedin the same year. Most of the students were sent to France and Germany tostudy arts, sciences, and engineering. The high school graduates who wouldpass the “The Examination for Europe” (Avrupa imtihanı) organisedacrossAnatolian towns, were awarded with scholarship and directly sent toEurope where they would first learn the language of the country they were tostudy. The first group left in 1925. A law instated in 1929 would buildforeign education on a solid ground and more students were sent in the1930s.With the outbreak of WWII in 1939, all Turkish students were calledback and returned to Turkey. Some went back to Germany and studied under warconditions, some preferred to leave for the United States where they weremostly trained in Engineering. A number of them conducted PhD studies,allowing for their initiation to scientific research. The latter would laterbe instrumental in establishing the “research culture” in Turkey.The present paper aims to give a survey of Turkish students who studied inFrance between 1923-1950 in arts (painting, sculpture and music), socialsciences (history, philosophy, literature, geography, psychology, sociology,art history), mathematical and natural sciences (mathematics, physics,astronomy, chemistry, geology, zoology). A smaller number of studentsstudiedalso engineering (mining, telecommunication, forestry, agriculture,aeronautics). A good number of them studied at Sorbonne in Paris, but manyothers were scatted in provincial universities such as Lyon, Dijon, Nancy,Montpellier, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Caen, and Lille. During theirstudies over 4 to 5 years, they also became acquainted with European way oflife. When back to Turkey, they were not only instrumental in translatingFrench textbooks into Turkish, teaching updated scientific knowledge,introducing new techniques but also carried on to cherish the culture oftheir student years.