a rule · TurkeyTürkiye's international health tourism authorisation certificate

A compulsory certificate for any facility treating international patients and any intermediary bringing them, under the Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik published in the Resmî Gazete on 26 April 2025, No. 32882. MADDE 5(1) makes it compulsory for both and splits the issuing: the Ministry of Health licenses the facility, USHAŞ licenses the intermediary. The certificate cannot be transferred, and a separate one is needed for every branch.

Türkiye built a licensing regime around a trade that was already large, and the shape of the regime says what the state was worried about.

The first regulation, of 13 July 2017, No. 30123, dragged the broker inside an existing inspectable system rather than inventing one: it required the intermediary to hold a group A travel agency licence under Law 1618 of 1972, so a person arranging a hair transplant for a foreign buyer was, in Turkish law, running a travel agency, with the bonds, the premises and the registered manager that implies.

That instrument is gone. MADDE 17 of the regulation of 26 April 2025 repeals it, and the successor moves the intermediary's licence from the travel-agency system to USHAŞ, the Ministry's own international health services company. Most writing on this subject, including a good deal of it published since, still cites the 2017 number.

What the 2025 text adds is the part a patient would care about. MADDE 6(1)(c) makes complication insurance compulsory for procedures done in an operating-theatre setting, with a deadline of 31 December 2025. MADDE 6(1)(b) requires accreditation by TÜSKA for hospitals, medical centres, medical laboratories and dialysis centres, with a deadline of 31 December 2026. MADDE 6(1)(e) forbids a facility to buy intermediary services from an unlicensed party. And MADDE 6(3) puts complications and medical malpractice expressly inside the certificate holder's responsibility — a sentence with no counterpart in most of the world's medical-travel regimes.

Enforcement has teeth on paper. MADDE 9 has USHAŞ evaluate every holder annually, with a three-month suspension for a partially adequate result, six months for an inadequate one, and cancellation after a failed second control evaluation. MADDE 16 cancels a certificate for a year of inactivity, bars a new one for a year after cancellation, and notifies suspensions to the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Hair transplants have a rule of their own, which is where the state's real anxiety shows. The Saç Ekimi Birimleri Hakkında Yönetmelik of 6 May 2023, Resmî Gazete 32182, reserves the channel-opening stage to physicians holding the applicator certificate, forbids more than one patient in a room at a time, caps one certified physician at five rooms, and fines a breach at one to three per cent of the previous month's gross service revenue with cancellation and no re-issue on persistence. Inference — those prohibitions map one for one onto the practices the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery had been alleging publicly since 2016, which makes the regulation itself the best evidence that the practices existed.

The Ministry publishes the registers: separate downloadable lists of authorised hospitals, medical centres, private physician offices and other facilities, held by the Health Services General Directorate's health tourism department. Inference — a published register is the one thing a reader abroad can check, and it checks a narrow thing: that the holder is authorised to trade with foreign patients. It is not a quality rating and the Ministry does not present it as one.

The Ministry issues the facility certificate; USHAŞ issues the intermediary's. The published lists are the register, and a facility or intermediary not on them is not authorised, whatever its own site says. Holders must register on the HealthTürkiye portal and keep the data current (MADDE 8(4)), run an international health tourism unit with at least one documented foreign-language speaker (MADDE 7), and — for intermediaries — answer around the clock in at least two foreign languages (MADDE 6(2)(b)). Pricing is set by the Ministry (MADDE 11(1)).

What the regime does not do: guarantee a clinical outcome, or rate anybody. It licenses the trade and gives the Ministry a power to stop an unlicensed one.

As of 17 September 2026 the instrument in force is the 2025 regulation, and the Ministry's four published lists of authorised facilities, stamped 20 August 2026, run to 542 hospitals, 135 medical centres, 2,468 private physician offices and 1,581 other facilities. That totals 4,726, which is a sum made here — the Ministry prints no total, and it publishes no count of authorised intermediaries at all. The promotion and information regulation governing how holders may advertise was replaced on 12 November 2025.

The repealed 2017 instrument is kept in the sources register, marked repealed, because a great deal of secondary writing still cites it and a reader who finds that writing needs to be able to tell the two apart.