How to Choose a Safe Aesthetic Clinic in Istanbul

Start with the register, but know what it proves

Most guidance about choosing a clinic abroad is impressionistic: read the reviews, look at the photographs, trust your instincts. Turkey offers something more solid, and remarkably few patients are told about it.

Turkish regulation requires any health facility providing planned treatment to patients travelling from abroad to hold an International Health Tourism Authorisation Certificate. The rules were rewritten in April 2025, replacing the 2017 framework that a great deal of English-language guidance still describes.^[1] The certificate is issued by the Ministry of Health for treating facilities and by USHAŞ, the state health services company, for intermediary agencies.^[3] It cannot be transferred between businesses.

These registers are public. The Ministry's health tourism department publishes them by facility type — hospitals, medical centres, private practices, and other licensed facilities — and provincial health directorates publish local versions.^[2]

What the register confirms is that a facility is authorised to treat international patients. What it does not confirm is that the facility is equipped for your particular procedure, that the business marketing the treatment to you is the business that will provide it, or that the clinician who operates on you holds the relevant specialty. Those are separate questions, and the rest of this page is about them.

"Aesthetic clinic" is a marketing term, not a category

This is the point that catches most people out.

In Turkish regulation there is no facility class called an aesthetic clinic. The brand you are corresponding with may be a hospital, a medical centre, a licensed private practice, a polyclinic, an intermediary agency that arranges treatment elsewhere, or a beauty business that is not a health facility at all. These hold different licences, carry different obligations, and have different capabilities.

So the question is not whether the brand appears on the Ministry's list. It is which licensed facility, under its full registered name, will actually provide your treatment — and whether that entity is authorised.^[2]

Brand name and registered entity often differ. Ask for both.

Accreditation: what changes at the end of 2026

Authorisation is the legal floor. Accreditation is an assessment of quality and patient safety systems, and two names come up.

TÜSKA, the Turkish Health Services Quality and Accreditation Institute, is where something significant is about to happen. Under the 2025 regulation, authorised hospitals, medical centres, medical laboratories and dialysis centres must hold TÜSKA accreditation by 31 December 2026. Other authorised facilities — including licensed private practices, where a great deal of aesthetic work in Istanbul is actually performed — must instead obtain a Ministry-issued certificate.^[1] TÜSKA has told facilities that those who have not completed the process by that date will not be able to continue treating international patients.^[4]

With the deadline now months away rather than years, the useful question is no longer whether a facility intends to apply. It is whether it has applied, and where in the process it stands.

JCI, Joint Commission International, is voluntary and not required by Turkish regulation. It is most commonly encountered at hospital level, though it does run an ambulatory care programme, so a smaller outpatient provider is not categorically excluded from it. Its absence, on its own, tells you very little.^[6]

Neither tells you whether the individual treating you is appropriately qualified. Accreditation assesses institutions, not people.

Complication insurance: a claim to examine carefully

You may be told that Turkish clinics are now required to carry insurance covering complications that develop after surgery, and that this protects you by law. The position is more complicated than that, and the gap matters.

The 2025 regulation did introduce such a requirement for surgical and interventional procedures performed in an operating theatre.^[1] In December 2025, however, the Council of State suspended the execution of that provision in a case brought by the Turkish Medical Association. The court's reasoning turned on the distinction between a complication and malpractice, and on whether an obligation of this kind can be imposed by regulation rather than by primary legislation.^[5]

Meanwhile, insurers and some clinics have continued to market the cover as a legal guarantee already in force.

This does not mean complication cover is worthless. A facility may hold it voluntarily, and it can be genuinely valuable. It means you cannot assume it exists, and you should not accept a general assurance that you are protected by law. Ask whether the facility holds cover, what it includes, what it excludes, and for how long after discharge it applies.

Signals worth taking seriously

None of these is proof on its own.

• The facility cannot readily tell you its authorisation status or registered name. An authorised facility knows its own certificate.
• An intermediary presents itself as a clinic. Agencies and treating facilities hold different authorisations. An intermediary whose website reads as though it performs surgery is misrepresenting what it is, and a misleading website presentation can block an authorisation application. Working through an authorised intermediary is entirely legitimate. Being unable to tell which one you are dealing with is not.^[3]
• A non-refundable deposit before any clinician has reviewed your medical information, or without written cancellation and refund terms. The deposit itself is not the problem; assessment following payment is. So is being asked to pay into a personal rather than a corporate account.
• No named clinician before you travel. Without a name, you cannot check anything.
• A quote with no itemisation. Ask which charges belong to the facility and which to the intermediary.
• No agreed plan for the weeks after you fly home.

Questions to ask before you commit

Ask by email and keep the replies. Willingness to answer in writing is itself informative.

1. What is the full registered name and facility type of the provider where my treatment will take place, and does it hold a current health tourism authorisation certificate?
2. Am I contracting with that facility directly, or through an intermediary? If through an intermediary, which one, and is it authorised?
3. Is the facility TÜSKA-accredited, or has it applied ahead of the December 2026 deadline?
4. Who will perform the procedure, what is their recognised medical specialty, and can you confirm it in writing?
5. In which licensed facility and setting will the procedure take place? If general anaesthesia or sedation is involved, will an anaesthetist be present, and what are the arrangements for overnight stay and emergency transfer?
6. Does the facility hold complication insurance? What does it cover, what does it exclude, and for how long after discharge?
7. What does the quoted figure include and exclude, and will I receive an itemised invoice separating facility charges from any intermediary charges?
8. Will I receive consent documents in a language I read, and will the operating clinician — rather than a patient coordinator — discuss risks and realistic outcomes with me directly?
9. How many days should I remain in Turkey afterwards, and who decides when I am fit to fly?
10. Which parts of follow-up will you provide remotely after I return home, which symptoms require urgent local care, and who coordinates if a complication develops?

Question 10 tends to be where the gaps show. A credible provider should also be able to explain how your medical history, current medication, previous procedures and anaesthetic risk bear on whether this treatment is appropriate for you at all — and should be willing to say when it is not.

Sources

Every register and professional body this guide relies on, so that the figures above can be checked at the organisation that publishes them rather than taken from us.

• 1.
  Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik (Resmî Gazete, 26.04.2025, No. 32882)

  Official register

  The regulation itself, in the official gazette. Article 17 repeals the 2017 framework that most English-language guidance still describes; Article 6 sets the service standards an authorised facility works to, and Provisional Article 1 sets the dates by which each of them applies.

• 2.
  T.C. Sağlık Bakanlığı, Sağlık Turizmi Daire Başkanlığı — authorised facilities and intermediary agencies

  Official register

  The Ministry's own index of who holds a health tourism authorisation certificate, linking the facility list and the intermediary list. This is the page to check a clinic against, and checking it takes about two minutes.

  • Authorised health facilities
  • Authorised intermediary agencies
• 3.
  USHAŞ — aracı kuruluş yetkilendirme (intermediary authorisation)

  Official register

  The state health services company authorises the agencies that arrange treatment, separately from the Ministry's authorisation of the facilities that provide it. A patient who cannot tell which of the two they are talking to can settle it here.

• 4.
  TÜSKA — Türkiye Sağlık Hizmetleri Kalite ve Akreditasyon Enstitüsü

  Official register

  The accreditation institute's own notice to authorised facilities about the 31 December 2026 deadline, and what it says will happen to those that have not completed the process. Its register of accredited organisations is where a claim to hold the accreditation can be checked.

  • Organisations accredited by TÜSKA
  • What accreditation is, and which facilities it is compulsory for
• 5.
  Danıştay 10. Dairesi, 25.12.2025 — suspension of Article 6/1(c), reported by the Turkish Medical Association

  Official register

  The Council of State suspended the execution of the complication insurance requirement in the case brought by the Turkish Medical Association. The reason this matters to a patient is that the cover is still being marketed as a legal guarantee already in force.

• 6.
  Joint Commission International — accredited organisations register

  Third-party accreditor

  The public register of JCI-accredited hospitals. A hospital's accreditation is either in this register or it is not, which makes it checkable in a way that a badge on the hospital's own website is not.

  • Ambulatory health care accreditation programme

Listing a body here is not a claim of endorsement by it. Where a figure could not be traced to a source of this kind, it was removed from the guide rather than published unattributed.