Not to actually turn them.
What I can only assume you were thinking of there , were Reaction Wheels. Now reaction wheels ARE used to turn small satelites and telescopes in space to retain precise control over the satelite. These aren\'t objects nearly big enough to be called space ships (though they technically still are space faring vesels).and they carry no humans anywhere. It\'s essentially a \'\'physics exploit\'\' in real life - capitalising on Newton\'s 3rd law of motion (\'\'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction\'\'). Using reaction wheels also allows you to control the rotation of your satelite for as long as you have electricity. With things like RCS, which are how anything with any eaningful size is rotated in space, you need fuel. Fuel runs out and you are stuck.
But to be able to turn even a frigate, your reaction wheels would have to have a substantial size. Then, you need a reaction wheel for every axis you want to rotate around. Now you COULD just have one omni directional reaction wheel (pivoting around to exert angular momentuim in the direction you want it to) or sphere (above, but much easier ^^). However they are and need to be very heavy to be able to produce a force large enough to turn a substantial space craft, not to mention that they need to be placed dead-on at the centre of mass and would take up a lot of space - essentially forcing all spaceships to become flying spheres, unless you had a ship boxy enough to contain it inside, wasting a lot of valuable space.
TL:DR: GYROSCOPES don\'t turn ships, Reaction Wheels do but they are not practical for anything larger than a satelite. They are precission tools. Thrusters are the best way to turn large ships. (turning ships isn\'t even practical once your vessel is over 1000 meters long - you just point it and fly straight to your destination, without altering your course along the way).
