a country · TurkeyTürkiye

The largest inbound trade in Europe, and the only one the state licenses as its own category. A facility that treats foreign patients must hold an international health tourism authorisation certificate from the Ministry of Health, and so must the agency that books them. Hair restoration, dental work, rhinoplasty and bariatric surgery carry the volume; the packages bundle hotel, transfers and an interpreter into the price and quote in euros, sterling or dollars rather than lira.

The regulation arrived on 13 July 2017 in Resmî Gazete No. 30123. Article 5(1) makes the authorisation certificate compulsory for the health facility and for the intermediary, which must be a licensed A-group travel agency, and it lets the Ministry stop the activity of anyone trading without one. Article 6 requires an international health tourism unit inside the facility, headed by a doctor with at least five years in practice, with at least two staff who speak a foreign language and English among them at B2. Every patient treated under the regulation is registered in a web-based system the Ministry runs.

The counting follows from that registration. USHAŞ, the Ministry's own international health services company, publishes the series it attributes to TÜİK: 756,926 visitors in 2019, a collapse to 435,691 in 2020, then 1,381,807 in 2022, 1,538,643 in 2023, 1,506,442 in 2024 and 1,398,580 in 2025 against revenue of USD 3,022,452 thousand. Read the unit before the trend: this counts visitors who state a health purpose, so it takes in the day patient and the person who came for one consultation, and revenue divided by visitors gives roughly USD 2,160 a head for 2025 — a number that describes a dental appointment and a cardiac operation in the same breath.

Trade practice — the hair clinics are the part of the trade that grew fastest and is watched hardest. The International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery has named Türkiye in its campaign against unlicensed operators and reports Turkish technician teams working abroad under licensed doctors; the Turkish rule that the operation is a doctor's act, and the clinic's own page telling readers that a price below EUR 1,500 is a warning sign, describe the same market from two directions.

Inference — the one flow that runs the other way is reproductive. Turkish law restricts third-party assisted reproduction, and a 2010 regulation reached at patients who went abroad for it, so Turkish patients travel out for donor treatment while foreign patients travel in for hair and teeth. The country is a destination and a source market in different specialties, on the same flights.

Sold as a package with a fixed number quoted in a foreign currency: operation, hospital or clinic, hotel nights, airport and hotel transfers, an interpreter, and aftercare products. Flights, travel insurance, extra nights and anything found once the patient is on the table sit outside. Payment is usually a deposit to hold the date and the balance on arrival. The certificate the facility holds is a Ministry document rather than a voluntary accreditation, and it is separate from any JCI mark the hospital also carries.

The instrument in force is the Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik of 26 April 2025, Resmî Gazete 32882, which at MADDE 17 repeals the 2017 regulation most writing on this subject still cites. It makes the authorisation certificate compulsory for the facility and for the intermediary — the Ministry licenses the first, USHAŞ the second — requires complication insurance for theatre procedures, requires accreditation by TÜSKA, and at MADDE 6(3) puts complications and medical malpractice expressly inside the certificate holder's responsibility. Hair transplants have a rule of their own: the Saç Ekimi Birimleri Yönetmeliği of 6 May 2023, Resmî Gazete 32182, which reserves the channel-opening stage to certified physicians, forbids more than one patient in a room at a time, and fines a breach at one to three per cent of the previous month's gross service revenue.

As of 16 September 2026 an Istanbul hair clinic lists sapphire FUE up to 4,000 grafts at EUR 2,550 and DHI at EUR 3,290, each with a megasession surcharge above 4,000 grafts, and an Istanbul bariatric clinic lists a gastric sleeve at EUR 2,600 all-inclusive. USHAŞ reports 563,327 visitors and USD 1.580 billion for the first half of 2026. What none of those numbers carry is the revision: the operation booked at home when something needs doing again.