Dental Tourism in Turkey 2026: Statistics and Data Report

1. Türkiye over time: two official series

Türkiye has two official sources for health tourism, and they measure different things. USHAŞ (the Ministry of Health’s international health services company, which runs the HealthTürkiye brand) counts international patients registered by authorised facilities and the revenue those facilities report. TÜİK (the Turkish Statistical Institute) estimates, from its border survey of departing visitors, how many came mainly for health or medical reasons and how much they spent on health. A tourist who has a dental check-up during a beach holiday can appear in the USHAŞ registry but not in the TÜİK “health purpose” count. We therefore show the two series in separate tables and never add, average or reconcile them.

Neither series separates dentistry. Health tourism in Türkiye includes, among others, aesthetic surgery, hair transplantation, dental treatment, eye care, orthopaedics, cardiology, oncology, IVF and bariatric surgery, according to the Service Exporters’ Association (HİB) ^[3]. Every total on this page is for all of these together.

Series 1: patients registered by the Ministry of Health and USHAŞ

The registry shows growth from 74,093 patients in 2008 to 210,000 in 2012 ^[9], and then a much larger base of 1,506,442 in 2024 and 1,398,580 in 2025 ^[2]. We could not confirm registry figures for 2013 to 2023, so the chart has a gap rather than a guessed line. The first quarter of 2026 counted 302,487 patients and US$761.5 million in revenue ^[3].

2008–2012 and 2024–2026 come from different publications; we have no registry figure for 2013–2023 that we could confirm (see the data audit). Change in patients 2024 to 2025: −7.2% (our calculation from the two USHAŞ figures). Revenue in current US dollars.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-series1-ushas-moh.csv

Series 2: health visitors and their spending (TÜİK)

The TÜİK series is smaller in volume because it only counts visitors whose main reason for travel was health. It rose from 267,461 in 2013 to 433,292 in 2017 ^[6]. The pandemic year 2021 had about 243,000 and 2022 about 663,000 ^[5]. First-half figures are the most consistent recent measure: 788,386 in H1 2023, 801,723 in H1 2024 ^[7], about 733,000 in H1 2025 ^[5] and about 563,000 in H1 2026 ^[4].

Spending moved the other way in 2026. Health spending by visitors was US$1,621.9 million in H1 2024 ^[7], US$1,392 million in H1 2025 ^[5] and US$1,580 million in H1 2026; in the second quarter alone it rose from US$749 million to US$834 million, about 11% ^[4]. For scale, Türkiye received 63.9 million visitors for all purposes in 2025 ^[11].

TÜİK publishes these figures in its tourism statistics; we read them from the news and association reports listed, because the TÜİK data portal could not be opened as a static page. Full-year TÜİK health figures for 2014–2016, 2018–2020 and 2023–2025 are not in our dataset. The H1 2023 figure is labelled as full-year 2023 in a later news report; see the data audit.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-series2-tuik.csv

Series 3: figures we cannot place in either series

Some widely quoted figures are attributed to “TÜİK” or “TÜİK and USHAŞ” by secondary publishers, without a table that shows which series they belong to. We show them separately so that you can see the disagreement for yourself.

The 2023 USTE revenue (US$3.0 billion) and the Medikal Akademi projection (US$2.3–2.4 billion) cannot both describe the same series. The USTE 2023 figures are close in size to USHAŞ’s 2024–2025 figures, so they may come from the USHAŞ registry; we could not confirm this and do not merge them with either series.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-series3-unclear-attribution.csv

2. Revenue per patient

Revenue per patient is rising while patient numbers fall. USHAŞ reported an average of about US$2,000 per patient in 2024 and US$2,200 in 2025 ^[2]. Dividing the published totals gives about US$2,007 and US$2,161, so the reported 2025 figure is rounded. HİB reported that revenue per patient rose by about 39% in Q1 2026 compared with Q1 2025 ^[3].

Earlier averages based on Ministry of Health and TÜİK data were US$1,329 in 2003, US$2,859 in 2020, US$2,575 in 2021 and US$1,663–1,684 in 2022 ^[8]. The 2020–2021 values fall in the pandemic years; we have no data that explains the swing, so we do not interpret it.

Our own division of TÜİK totals shows the same 2026 shift: health spending per health visitor was about US$1,899 in H1 2025 and about US$2,806 in H1 2026. A single half-year does not prove a lasting change, and none of these averages separates dental treatment.

Three different bases are shown: published Ministry of Health/TÜİK averages, USHAŞ averages as reported, and our own division of TÜİK totals. Do not compare across bases. All values are in current US dollars, not adjusted for inflation.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-revenue-per-patient.csv

3. Targets compared with results

Published targets for health tourism in Türkiye are several times larger than the results. For 2025 a target of US$10–12 billion and about 2 million patients was reported ^[12]. The 2025 result was US$3.02 billion and 1,398,580 patients ^[2], so revenue reached about 25–30% of the target.

On 29 April 2025 the Minister of Health set a target of US$20 billion a year by the end of the following four years ^[1]. From the 2025 result, that needs average growth of about 60% a year. For 2026, the ASKON business association named a target of more than 1.6 million patients and about US$4 billion ^[2]; this is a sector goal, not an official one.

The growth rate is our arithmetic: (20 ÷ 3.02)^(1/4) − 1. It is not a forecast. It only shows how far the target is from the latest annual result.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-targets-vs-results.csv

4. Source markets: who travels and why

Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, Azerbaijan and Iraq were named as the five main source countries for 2025, in a report on USHAŞ data ^[2]. HİB lists Germany, the UK, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Russia, Libya and the Gulf countries, and says Central Asia is rising ^[3]. In 2019 TÜİK named West Asia, Azerbaijan and the UK as the main origins of health visitors ^[10]. None of these lists came with per-country patient counts, so we give no shares.

Survey percentages describe respondents, not whole populations. We list a market only where a figure was opened at source or reported from an official source.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-source-markets.csv

United Kingdom

The UK is the only source market with a long official series on medical travel. The ONS International Passenger Survey estimates that UK residents made 59,247 visits abroad for medical treatment in 2009, 120,239 in 2015 and 248,274 in 2019, about 2.1 times the 2015 level ^[13]. A separate ONS release gives 431,000 visits in 2023 ^[14]. These are visits for any medical treatment, to any country; a person who travels twice is counted twice.

Türkiye is inside the ONS “Rest of Europe” group in this release. That group’s share of UK medical-treatment visits rose from 17.3% in 2015 to 20.4% in 2019 (our calculation) ^[13]. ONS warns that the estimates are survey-based and should be treated with caution.

For 2024 ONS published, for the first time, a table by destination country. It estimates that residents of Great Britain made 523,000 visits abroad for medical treatment in 2024, of which 196,000 were to Türkiye, the highest figure in the table; Poland (64,000) and Romania (52,000) follow ^[37]. Türkiye’s share is about 37% (our calculation). ONS labels these “official statistics in development”: they cover Great Britain rather than the UK, are rounded to the nearest 1,000, carry no confidence intervals, and rest on fewer Quarter 2 interviews than usual. They count visits for any medical treatment, not dental care alone, and are not comparable with the 2023 UK figure above because the population and the survey design differ.

Rounded to the nearest 1,000; official statistics in development; residents of Great Britain, not the UK; visits, not visitors; all medical treatment, not dental alone. Not comparable with the UK series above.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-uk-ons-medical-visits.csv

At home, 18 million adults in England, 40% of the adult population, saw an NHS dentist in the 24 months to 31 March 2025; NHS dentists delivered 35 million courses of treatment in 2024/25, 4% more than a year earlier ^[15]. From April 2026 NHS England charges are set in three bands: £27.90, £76.60 and £332.10, the last covering crowns, dentures and bridges ^[16][17]. In the 2022 BDA survey, UK dentists named cheaper costs (98%) and a perception of shorter waiting times (31%) as the main reasons patients go abroad ^[18].

Germany

German statutory health insurance (GKV) reimburses treatment abroad under § 13 SGB V only for providers in the EU, the EEA or Switzerland, and at most at the rate it would pay for the same treatment in Germany ^[19]. Türkiye is not in that group. For a standard back-tooth metal crown in 2026, the total cost of standard care is €398.39; the insurer’s fixed subsidy is €239.03 without a bonus booklet and up to €298.79 with a full one ^[20]. German consumer advisers write that dental prostheses from Asia or treatment in Eastern Europe can cost around 50% less, “according to advertising” 70 or 80%, and that travel, accommodation and follow-up raise the total ^[21]; Türkiye is not named in that article.

Price is not what German patients say decides their choice. In a German survey of 1,368 people, 92.4% named quality as the decisive criterion for dentures made abroad or dental tourism, and 31.1% a lower price ^[22]. Among 508 patients from Switzerland treated in German border clinics, 95.6% said treatment there was cheaper ^[23].

United States

In 2025, 66.7% of US adults had a dental examination or cleaning in the past year ^[24]. We do not have a verified figure for US adults who travel abroad for dental care. For Mexico, an industry estimate quoted in the Mexican press puts the US share of its medical tourists at 80% (industry estimate) ^[27].

Gulf, Iran, Azerbaijan and the diaspora

In a 2026 survey of 326 dentists in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, 97.5% had seen patients who had dental treatment abroad. The destinations they named most were Egypt (71.8%), Türkiye (69.6%) and other GCC countries (50%) ^[25]. These are shares of dentists, not of patients.

For Iran we have no official outbound volume. Travel conditions changed in September 2026: Turkish Airlines, AJet and Pegasus withdrew Iran flights from sale, with the earliest return given as March 2027 for Turkish Airlines and AJet ^[26]. Azerbaijan appears in every source-country list above, but without a published count. Türkiye’s Minister of Health has said that Turkish citizens living abroad prefer to wait for their leave periods to be treated in Türkiye ^[1]. For Ireland, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries we found no official data on outbound dental travel.

5. Türkiye and other destinations

Volume figures for dental-tourism destinations are not comparable, and most are not official. Türkiye publishes a registry total for all health tourism. Mexico’s tourism ministry has claimed up to 3 million medical-tourism patients a year (2022), and an industry estimate gives 1.4–3 million (industry estimate; method not published) ^[27]. For Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Spain, Albania, Costa Rica and Colombia we found no official volume figure, and the figures for India and Thailand could not be opened at source.

We therefore classify destinations only where a measured series exists. In our dataset that is Türkiye alone: volume fell in 2025 and in H1 2026 while revenue per patient rose. We do not label any other destination as rising or declining.

Different countries measure different things (patients, visits, arrivals, claims), so volume figures are not comparable across rows. We label a destination as rising or declining only when a measured series shows it; in our dataset that is true for Türkiye only.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-destinations.csv

6. Within Türkiye: provinces and facilities

There is no public count of health or dental tourists by province. The national authorisation figures are the most detailed official numbers we found: on 24 July 2024, 654 hospitals, 189 medical centres, 2,525 private practices (the muayenehane category, which includes dental offices) and 1,299 other facilities were authorised for international health tourism ^[7]. Medikal Akademi counted 4,555 authorised organisations on the Ministry’s list on 5 December 2023 and 4,787 on 28 December 2023 (its chart caption says 29 December) ^[8].

The 2023 ‘organisations’ count and the 2024 ‘facilities’ count come from different publications and may use different definitions; we do not compare them. No provincial breakdown was published with either figure.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-authorised-facilities.csv

For provinces we have one ranking, from a 2024 master’s thesis that used TÜİK and Ministry of Culture and Tourism data: İstanbul first, followed by Ankara, İzmir and Antalya ^[35]. It is a thesis ranking, not an official statistic, and it gives no counts. Antalya received 11,023,586 foreign visitors for all purposes from January to August 2026, 5.8% fewer than a year earlier ^[36]; we found no public figure for how many of them came for dental or other health care.

7. Quality and safety evidence

The published evidence on dental tourism is small and mostly based on what dentists report. A PubMed search returns 55 records with “dental tourism” in the title or abstract ^[31]. We found no cohort study that measures complication rates after dental treatment in Türkiye. The table lists what exists, with the year and sample size.

Dentist-reported rates are not measured complication rates. A PubMed search for “dental tourism” in titles and abstracts returned 55 records on 9 October 2026 ^[31]; we found no cohort study that measures complication rates after dental treatment in Türkiye.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-quality-evidence.csv

In the 2022 British Dental Association survey of 1,000 UK dentists, 94% had examined patients treated abroad and 86% had treated problems afterwards. Crowns (87%) and implants (85%) most often needed follow-up; 65% reported repair costs of at least £500, and 51% more than £1,000. Dentists described over-prepared teeth, extensive work on healthy teeth in “smile makeovers”, ill-fitting crowns, implants that fell out and treatment despite untreated gum disease; 93% raised concerns about continuity of care ^[18]. We found no newer BDA survey that we could open at source.

The Saudi study gives the most specific picture of what goes wrong. The problems dentists saw most were no treatment planning (73.6%), no access to the treating dentist after the patient returned (66.6%) and no follow-up (59.5%). The treatments most often received abroad were veneers (81.9%), crowns (78.5%) and bridges (76.1%) ^[25]. In Hungary, dentists put the complication rate in dental care at around 5%, similar to other European countries (2013) ^[28].

A 2026 UK review is often quoted in discussions of medical travel to Türkiye, but it excludes dental treatment. It found 655 NHS patients described in case reports after elective surgery abroad (bariatric, cosmetic and eye surgery), with Türkiye the destination in 61% of cases, and called for systematic national data collection ^[29]. It cannot be used to estimate dental complications. A 2025 review of 131 UK newspaper articles on dental tourism found that tabloid coverage often stigmatised patients ^[30].

8. Regulation and how to check a clinic

Since April 2025, facilities in Türkiye that serve international health tourists must hold a Ministry of Health authorisation certificate and keep their data on the HealthTürkiye portal accurate ^[32]. That makes the portal listing the first thing to check. The rules below are the ones most relevant to patients.

The 2025 regulation text was read in a reproduction (Alomaliye); the Official Gazette page for the November 2025 regulation was opened directly.

Use these six checks for any clinic, including ours. A clinic that is ready for international patients will answer each one in writing before you book a flight.

How to look up a clinic: open healthturkiye.gov.tr, search for the clinic by name, and compare the listing (facility type, city, languages) with what the clinic tells you. Ask for the authorisation certificate number. A longer version of this checklist is published as a plain-text file for patients and AI assistants: how to choose a dental clinic in Turkey. Our 12-point clinic verification framework explains how to check reviews and credentials, and our doctors’ guide is dental tourism in Turkey safe? discusses the risks in more depth.

9. Clinic data: Ulubey Dental Clinic

10. Outlook: targets, not forecasts

We publish no forecast. The forward-looking numbers that exist are targets: US$20 billion a year within four years of April 2025 (Ministry of Health) ^[1] and, for 2026, more than 1.6 million patients and about US$4 billion (ASKON, a business association) ^[2]. Market-research forecasts for the sector exist but were not collected for this report; if we add them, they will be labelled as industry estimates.

What the measured data says about direction, as of the latest releases:

• Volume: down. USHAŞ patients fell 7.2% in 2025 ^[2]; TÜİK health visitors fell about 22% in H1 2026 ^[4].
• Value: up. Revenue per patient rose in 2025 and in Q1 2026 ^[2][3]; TÜİK health spending rose about 11% in Q2 2026 ^[4].
• Rules: tighter. Authorisation, portal data and complication insurance are mandatory, and the accreditation transition ends on 31 December 2026 ^[32].
• Travel links: Iran flights by Turkish Airlines, AJet and Pegasus were withdrawn from sale in September 2026 ^[26].

Against the 2025 result, the official target needs about 60% average growth a year. Nothing in the measured series since 2024 shows growth at that pace. We will update this section when TÜİK and USHAŞ publish full-year 2026 figures.

11. Data audit: where popular numbers come from

Many figures about dental tourism in Türkiye cannot be traced to a primary source. This table lists the ones we checked, where we found them, and why we do or do not use them. Figures marked “unverifiable” are shown here only so you can recognise them; they are not facts in this report.

Listing a figure here is not a judgement on whoever repeats it. It records whether we could trace it to a primary or official source.

Download this table: dental-tourism-turkey-2026-data-audit.csv

12. Methodology and limitations

13. How to cite, downloads and update log

Suggested citation: Ulubey Dental Clinic. “Dental Tourism in Turkey 2026: Statistics and Data Report.” Version 2.0. https://ulubeydental.com/dental-tourism-turkey-statistics/ (accessed [date]). For third-party figures, please also cite the original publisher listed in the Sources.

Downloads (CSV, UTF-8): each main table is available as a file with the source of every row.

• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-series1-ushas-moh.csv: Series 1. International health-tourism patients and revenue registered by the Ministry of Health and USHAŞ
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-series2-tuik.csv: Series 2. Visitors arriving for health or medical reasons and their health spending (TÜİK border survey)
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-series3-unclear-attribution.csv: Series 3. Figures whose series is unclear (kept apart from Series 1 and Series 2)
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-revenue-per-patient.csv: Average health-tourism revenue per patient or visitor (US$)
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-targets-vs-results.csv: Targets compared with results
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-uk-ons-medical-visits.csv: UK residents' visits abroad for medical treatment (ONS International Passenger Survey)
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-source-markets.csv: Source markets: what is measured, and what is not
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-destinations.csv: Destination comparison: what can and cannot be compared
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-authorised-facilities.csv: Facilities and organisations authorised for international health tourism in Türkiye
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-quality-evidence.csv: Quality and safety evidence: studies and surveys
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-data-audit.csv: Data audit: where popular numbers come from
• dental-tourism-turkey-2026-report-tables.csv: all tables above in one file (long format)

Licence: the data tables and CSV files in this report are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). You may reuse them, including commercially, if you credit Ulubey Dental Clinic and link to this page. Figures from other publishers remain subject to their own terms; please also cite them as listed in the Sources. The licence does not cover photos, logos or the clinic’s own text.

We review the report every quarter and after new TÜİK, USHAŞ or ONS releases; the date at the top changes only when we re-check the sources.

15. Frequently asked questions