From the Seljuk Empire and until the Turkish Republic, the Turkish higher education system was based on the madrasa tradition. In the late period of the Ottoman Empire, along with madrasa, which was the classic educational institution, besides military schools giving education in western style, opening civil educational institutions, similar to the university in Europe, started. The first schools opened were in the French model first, similar to the country and its cultural institutions, which the state sympathized with in the foreign policy, and the universities opened in the late periods until the end of the Second World War were tried to be built similar to the German Higher Education system. After the war, on the other hand, university institutions according to the Anglo-Saxon model started to be opened, too. While the institution of the university that developed in time through different models of different countries form with the historical processes and cultural texture of the country it is in, this institution was created by taking the models of the western state that is effective on Turkey as an example within the westernization activities rather than our sociological internal structure. In this study, the higher education systems in Europe that are taken as examples while creating our modern Turkish higher education system and their developments in history will be discussed.