Your rights as an international patient in Turkey

What you can ask for, and what a clinic only chooses to give

If a clinic in Türkiye holds an International Health Tourism Authorisation, it has taken on specific duties towards you. Those duties are not marketing promises. They are conditions of the licence. You can ask for them by name, and a facility that holds the authorisation is expected to meet them.

Other things you will see in a quote — airport transfers, a translator who stays with you all day, a hotel upgrade, a follow-up call after you go home — may be genuine and useful. They are courtesies. They are not obligations, and no one is required to provide them. Knowing which is which tells you what to put in writing before you pay.

First, confirm the licence itself

Turkish law requires a facility to hold an International Health Tourism Authorisation before it may treat patients who travel to Türkiye for care. There are 4,403 facilities with that authorisation today. You can check the clinic's licence against the Ministry's own documents before you discuss anything else.

Two things the authorisation is not. It is an administrative permission. It does not grade the quality of care, and it is not a guarantee of outcome. A licence tells you the facility is allowed to treat international patients. It tells you nothing about how well it does so. If a clinic implies otherwise, that is worth noticing.

One caution about the register. If you cannot find a facility, do not conclude it is unlicensed. It may be listed under a different registered name, a company name, or a spelling variation. Search again before drawing a conclusion, and ask the clinic for its authorisation document directly.

Obligations: what you are entitled to ask for

These are requirements, not favours. Ask for each one by name.

• A consent form in a language you understand. A facility accepting health tourists must provide a consent form in English or another language the patient understands. If you are handed a Turkish form and asked to sign, say no and ask for the version you can read. Consent you cannot read is not consent.
• Information about how to complain. The patient must be informed about the complaint procedures available to them. Ask where this is written down and keep a copy. If no one can tell you, that itself is information.
• Access to your own medical records, including copies. Hospitals and clinics are required to give patients access to their own medical records, including copies. Ask before treatment how you will receive them, and in what format. Do not leave the country without them.
• Contact details reachable 24/7. Facilities providing health tourism services must display 24/7 reachable call centre or contact details for health tourism matters on their websites. Check the website yourself. If the number is missing or only works in office hours, ask why.

Where to go if the clinic does not respond

Every province has a Provincial Health Directorate containing a Health Tourism Unit that monitors health tourism in that province. This is a public body, not the clinic. If a facility will not give you your records or will not answer, the unit for the province where you were treated is a route that does not depend on the clinic's goodwill.

There are two national lines as well.

Line	Number	Details
SABİM complaints line	184	Ministry of Health complaints line, reachable inside Turkey. Translation is provided by three-way conference for foreign-language callers.
International Health Services Call Centre	0090 850 288 38 38	Run by the Ministry, 24 hours a day, in six languages.

If you are outside Türkiye, the second number is the one to use. The 184 line works from inside the country. Our guide on how to complain sets out the order to do things in.

Courtesies: what a clinic may offer but does not owe you

None of the following is required by the authorisation. A clinic may provide them, charge for them, or decline them. Treat each as a term to be agreed in writing, with a price and a named person responsible.

• Airport pickup and local transport
• Accommodation, and whether a companion can stay with you
• Interpreters beyond the consent form and complaint information
• Companion or carer access to the ward
• Follow-up consultations after you return home
• Help obtaining a visa or an appointment letter for one
• Payment plans or staged payment

Ask for these in the quote, in writing, before you pay a deposit. A courtesy that is not written down is not something you can rely on later.

What an ST number does and does not prove

You will see ST numbers quoted alongside clinic names. An ST number is an identifier tied to the authorisation, and it is worth checking that the number matches the facility you are actually dealing with — not a parent company, not a booking agent, not a different branch. Our guide on what an ST number proves explains the limits.

What it does not do is tell you whether the care is any good. No number on a certificate does that. The register shows a licence. It does not grade care.

How to check the document behind the licence

healthturkey.co publishes the Ministry's own PDF for each facility along with its SHA-256 hash, so the document can be checked byte for byte. That matters because it means you are not reading our summary of a licence, or a clinic's summary of its own licence. You are reading the Ministry's document, and you can verify that the file has not been altered since it was published.

Ask the clinic for its authorisation document. Then compare it with what is published. If the two do not match, stop and ask why before you send any money.

An authorisation is a permission to treat international patients. It is not a rating, not a recommendation, and not a prediction of your result. Use it to establish that a facility is allowed to operate, then do the rest of your checking yourself.

The practical summary: ask for the consent form in your language, the complaint procedure, your records and copies, and the 24/7 contact details. Those four are obligations. Everything else is a negotiation.