Medical Tourism License in Turkey: A Guide for Clinics Treating Foreign Patients

A medical tourism license in Turkey, officially the international health tourism authorization (sağlık turizmi yetki belgesi), is mandatory for clinics and hospitals that treat patients travelling from abroad and for the facilitators who arrange their care. The Ministry of Health licenses facilities, and USHAŞ, the state-owned International Health Services company, licenses facilitators. The current rules date from April 2025 and add accreditation, portal registration and website obligations. This article is general information, not legal advice.

Who this is for

You may run, own or market a dental, hair transplant or aesthetic clinic in Antalya or Istanbul that treats patients from the UK, Germany or the Gulf. You may be a foreign agency that sends patients to Turkish clinics. Either way, the license affects what you can do and how your website and adverts must look.

The rules in force

• International Health Tourism and Tourist Health Regulation (Official Gazette 26 April 2025, issue 32882; text in Turkish). It replaced the 2017 regulation that many older guides still describe.
• Regulation on Promotion and Information in Health Services (Official Gazette 12 November 2025, issue 33075; text in Turkish). It sets the advertising rules and has a separate article for health tourism.

Clinics and hospitals

• Applying. You apply through EKİP, the Ministry's online platform. The provincial health directorate reviews the file and inspects the premises. If it finds gaps, you have 30 working days to fix them. The Ministry then issues the license.
• Accreditation. Hospitals, medical centres, laboratories and dialysis centres need TÜSKA accreditation, and other facilities need a Ministry certificate. Facilities that were already licensed have until 31 December 2026.
• Complication insurance is required for surgery and interventional procedures in an operating theatre. A December 2025 Council of State decision suspended part of the wording on clinic liability for complications, so take legal advice on how that affects you.
• An international patient unit with at least one staff member with a documented foreign language, plus a named contact for each patient.
• HealthTürkiye. All licensed facilities and facilitators must register on the Ministry's HealthTürkiye portal and keep their data current.
• Prices for health tourism services are set within the Ministry's tariff rules, and invoices must itemise the services provided.

Facilitators

Facilitators apply to USHAŞ (ushas.gov.tr), which reviews the file and visits the office. Article 6 adds three practical rules:

• Hotels, transport and transfers must be arranged through a licensed Turkish travel agency, unless the facilitator is itself one. See our guide on how to get a TÜRSAB license.
• A call line answered 24/7 in at least two foreign languages, in-house or through a contracted call centre.
• Staff may not work for more than two facilitators at once.

Licenses cannot be transferred. Each branch needs its own license, and a license is cancelled after a year without health tourism activity.

What your foreign-facing website must do

Health advertising in Turkey is tightly controlled. Advertising in the ordinary sense is banned, and promotion aimed at people in Turkey may not mention prices, discounts or campaigns. For health tourism, Article 8 of the 2025 promotion regulation creates a separate space with its own conditions:

• Use a separate website or social media account aimed at patients abroad that says clearly it offers health tourism services. Sponsored posts are allowed in official languages other than Turkish.
• Publish your health tourism license on that website or account.
• Do not target people living in Turkey. Domestic audiences must not be selected and automatic audience targeting must be switched off.
• Patient stories and reviews are allowed with documented explicit consent and respect for privacy.
• Use the HealthTürkiye logo in health tourism promotion.
• Match names and domains. The clinic name, legal name and web address must match the licence holder. A facilitator's domain must contain its trade name, business name or an abbreviation.
• Prices and campaigns may be announced on these foreign-facing channels.

The health tourism regulation also requires every licensed facility and facilitator to have a website with foreign-language options, to use the licensed legal name and to publish its accreditation or certificate.

Before-and-after photos follow strict rules even here: written consent on the official form, the same setting and technique, dates shown, no retouching, comments switched off and no images from surgery.

For the structure of a clinic website, see our dental clinic website article; for languages and hreflang, see our multilingual tourism site guide.

Checklist

• [ ] License held (Ministry for clinics, USHAŞ for facilitators)
• [ ] TÜSKA accreditation or Ministry certificate planned before 31 December 2026
• [ ] Complication insurance for theatre procedures
• [ ] International patient unit and language-qualified staff
• [ ] HealthTürkiye registration up to date
• [ ] Foreign-facing site showing license, legal name, certificate and logo
• [ ] Ads targeted abroad only, automatic targeting off
• [ ] Consent forms and dates for every before-and-after image

Summary

The 2025 rules make the health tourism license something patients and regulators can see, not just a document in a drawer. Keep domestic and international promotion apart, show your license and accreditation clearly in every language, and route travel arrangements through a licensed agency. If you want a site that handles this cleanly, get in touch.