How to Verify a Surgeon's Qualifications Before Cosmetic Surgery in Turkey

Why this is harder than it should be

Almost every guide to cosmetic surgery abroad tells you to verify your surgeon's qualifications. Very few explain the mechanism.

Turkey's medical registration data sits behind e-Devlet, the state services portal, which asks for a Turkish identity number. If you live in Manchester or Hamburg, you cannot open it, and we have not found a searchable public directory of medical chamber membership either. The route that would be obvious elsewhere — looking the doctor up in an official register — is, as far as we could establish, not available to you.

That matters more in aesthetic medicine than almost anywhere else, because the gap between who is advertised and who operates is where avoidable harm tends to arise. What follows is what can be done instead, in the order worth doing it.

1. Check that the specialty matches the procedure

Medical practice is divided into recognised specialties, and a doctor's specialty shapes the scope of what they should be doing. The practical question is not "is this person a doctor" but "is this person's specialty one that covers the procedure I am booking". The second question is the one that gets skipped.

Some procedures sit where specialties overlap — surgery that is both functional and aesthetic, for instance — so ask the clinic which specialty covers yours and why, rather than assuming. Non-surgical treatments such as injectables and energy-based devices are not restricted to surgeons, which makes the question of who performs them, with which product and in which setting, no less important.

Turkish rules on how health services are promoted bar doctors from using a specialist title based on a certificate or course outside the recognised specialties. Professional memberships and training may be listed, but only alongside the specialty on the doctor's registered diploma.^[5]

2. Ask for the specialty diploma, in writing

The Turkish specialty qualification is called the uzmanlık belgesi. A specialist has one and will not find the request unusual. Ask for:

• The doctor's full name as it appears on the diploma, which may differ from the name used in marketing
• The specialty named on it
• The year and awarding institution
• A copy or clear photograph of the document

Then check that the name on the diploma is the name of the person you have been corresponding with, the name that will appear on your consent documents, and the name on your invoice. A mismatch is the single most informative thing you can find. Hesitation, redirection to a coordinator, or an assurance that "all our doctors are fully qualified" tells you something too.

3. Know what "board certified" does and does not mean

The phrase appears constantly in clinic marketing aimed at English-speaking patients, and it blurs four different things.

The state specialty diploma is the legal qualification to practise the specialty in Turkey. It matters most and is shown least often.

Professional society membership means the doctor joined an organisation and meets its criteria. It is a reasonable signal; it is not a licence and not a certification of competence in a particular procedure.

European board certification is awarded by examination, for plastic surgery through EBOPRAS.^[3] It is a genuine additional credential. It is also voluntary, so its absence proves nothing.

"Board certified" with no board named means nothing. Ask which board, in which country, in which specialty, and how it can be checked.

Some international societies publish searchable member directories. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons' directory includes members practising outside the United States, among them surgeons in Istanbul.^[4] It gives you a name you can look up from home without an identity number. Use it to cross-check what you have been told, not as the qualification itself.

4. Verify through the facility as well as the person

A doctor practises somewhere, and that somewhere is easier to verify. The Ministry of Health publishes lists of facilities authorised to treat international patients, by facility type.^[1] An authorised facility carries responsibility under the regulation that governs them.^[2]

This also surfaces a common mismatch: the brand marketing the treatment to you is often not the licensed facility where the surgery happens. Ask for the registered name of the facility, not the brand, and check that one.

Two rules help here. A facility authorised for international patients must publish its health tourism authorisation certificate on its website or social media account, and the facility name and web address on that site must match the name on its Ministry licence.^[5] If the site shows neither, ask why.

5. Ask who else is in the room

For surgery, the surgeon is not the only person whose qualifications affect the outcome.

• Who administers and monitors the anaesthesia, and are they an anaesthetist?
• Which parts of the procedure does the named doctor perform, and which are delegated to other staff? In hair restoration especially, the division of labour varies widely and is rarely volunteered.
• Who provides your post-operative care while you are still in Turkey, and are they clinically qualified or a coordinator?

A provider that answers these clearly, in writing, is telling you something about how it operates. One that treats them as unusual questions is telling you something as well.

What to send

A short email covers most of it:

1. The full name of the doctor who will perform the procedure, exactly as it appears on their specialty diploma
2. Their recognised medical specialty, with a copy of the specialty certificate
3. Any board certification, including which board and country
4. The full registered name and type of the licensed facility where the procedure will take place
5. Whether an anaesthetist will be present, and who they are
6. Which parts of the procedure will be performed by the named doctor

Say that you would like this in writing before making any payment, and keep the replies. If a complication arises later, written confirmation of who was responsible for what is worth far more than a recollection of a phone call.

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.
  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
• 2.
  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.

• 3.
  EBOPRAS — European Board of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery

  The European specialty board whose examination is a voluntary additional credential. Its site is where a claim to hold the diploma is put to the board itself.

• 4.
  American Society of Plastic Surgeons — Find a Surgeon

  A member directory that includes surgeons practising outside the United States, including in Istanbul. A name that can be searched from home, useful as a cross-check on what a clinic has told you rather than as a qualification in itself.

• 5.
  Sağlık Hizmetlerinde Tanıtım ve Bilgilendirme Faaliyetleri Hakkında Yönetmelik (Resmî Gazete, 12.11.2025, No. 33075)

  Official register

  How health services may be promoted. Article 5 sets the general rules (5(1)(d) limits specialist titles to the recognised specialties on the registered diploma), including the ban on price, discount and campaign information and on steering patients to a named provider; Article 8 sets different terms for facilities and agencies authorised for international patients (8(1)(b) requires the authorisation certificate to be published on their site; 8(1)(f) requires the site's facility name and URL to match the Ministry licence); Article 13 repeals the 2023 regulation (RG 29.07.2023, No. 32263).

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.