After the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 attempts were made to create a modern Turkish nation which was not based so much on refusing European cultural values, as on unbinding its ties with Islam and the Eastern world and claiming its place within the European culture and civilisation. For this purpose, in the first decades of the Republic an extensive programme of reforms was carried out. The years between 1923-1946, namely the single-party regime, were under the heavy influence of the Westernisation movement as the official ideology. The first intense translation activity and the first approach to translation was shaped by a government-engineered Translation Bureau (1940-1967) under such state policies. The period between 1940-1946 is the subject of this paper, as the most productive period of the Bureau, when it was still under the single-party regime and thus reflected government policies. [Source: author, record supplied by S. Tahir-Gürçağlar]