Since its founding eight decades ago, Turkey has emphasized universal education as a key to economic, social and political development. For fully half of that time, it has aspired to formal membership in the European community. Development in education, therefore, has been seen as one of the means through which Turkey both enhances its progress towards its social goals as well as prepares itself for potential European Union membership. In this context, Turkey has made a major effort to upgrade and modernize the Turkish educational system, introducing a multi-phased comprehensive reform of the education sector through the 1990s. One of those reforms, perhaps the one most crucial to the long-term effectiveness of many of the other efforts in education, has been an attempted transformation of the nation's approach to training teachers. It has now been five years since the completion of both the World Bank-funded National Education Development Project (NEDP), implemented by the British Council and Arizona State University between 1994 and 1999, and its parallel reform in restructuring faculties of education. In 2003-2004, a major study of the effects of the reforms introduced of Turkish teacher education by the project was conducted under the sponsorship of the Fulbright Commission for Educational Exchange between the United States and Turkey, one portion of which included an evaluation of teacher education curriculum reform, its levels of acceptance and use by professional teacher educators, and the attitudes of the teacher education community on the changes needed in teacher education in the future as Turkey aims toward EU membership. This paper examines the effectiveness of these recent efforts in teacher education reform in Turkey, specifically efforts to change curricula and accreditation criteria in faculties of education across the nation, from the perspectives of both teacher educators and the national educational leadership. In addition, the paper examines the theoretical implications for the modernization of teacher education in an institutional context. Further, attitude differences between Turkish teacher educators in terms of experience, rank, and degree of experience abroad are considered, among other criteria, factors which the research found to be crucial in differentiating attitudes toward the reform and the future of Turkish teacher education. Finally, the paper addresses issues that may be considered useful to consider for other European nations with similar developmental goals, both within and outside the EU.The study presents a detailed analysis of the curriculum developed by British Council/ Arizona State University World Bank project and measures a representative national sample of Turkish teacher educators and educational leaders, constituting one of the largest surveys of the national teacher educator community in Turkish history.