How many people travel to Turkey for health care, and which number can you trust? The official figure for 2025 is 1,398,580 visitors whose main reason for travelling was health, and together they spent about USD 3.02 billion on health care. If you have seen “2 million” quoted elsewhere, you’re not imagining it, and we’ll show you why the numbers differ.
The picture is calmer than the headlines suggest. Visitor numbers peaked in 2023 at 1,538,643 and have slipped since, but spending has stayed close to USD 3 billion. A smaller count says nothing about how safe or skilled any clinic is. It only counts arrivals.
In this guide from Prof Clinic in Istanbul, we go through the official figures and the one 2026 headline that is easy to misread. You’ll also see who is counted, who isn’t, and what to ask any clinic before you book.
How Many Medical Tourists Visit Turkey Each Year?
About 1.4 million. 1,398,580 people travelled to Turkey for health in 2025, which is 7.2% fewer than in 2024 and 9.1% below the 2023 record. Spending has barely moved: USD 3,022,452 thousand in 2025, only 0.5% above its 2023 level.
Think of it as the Volume–Value Split. Volume is how many people travel, and value is how much they spend on health care. The two rose together until 2023 and have parted since, so neither line can stand in for the other.
| Year | Health visitors | Change on previous year | Health spending (USD thousand) | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 756,926 | +15.3% | 1,459,132 | Pre-pandemic baseline |
| 2020 | 435,691 | −42.4% | 1,371,189 | Pandemic year, with a survey gap* |
| 2021 | 729,592 | +67.5% | 2,016,262 | Recovery begins |
| 2022 | 1,381,807 | +89.4% | 2,206,750 | Volume boom |
| 2023 | 1,538,643 | +11.4% | 3,006,092 | Record number of visitors |
| 2024 | 1,506,442 | −2.1% | 3,022,957 | Small dip, spending steady |
| 2025 | 1,398,580 | −7.2% | 3,022,452 | Fewer visitors, same spending |
Source: TurkStat, Departing Visitors Survey and tourism income tables. Changes are calculated from TurkStat figures; the 2019 change uses TurkStat’s 2018 figure of 656,320. *TurkStat could not run its border survey in the second quarter of 2020 because of the pandemic, so that year’s visitor total covers three quarters only.
The series falls into three phases:
- 2019–2021, shock and recovery. Visitors fell 42.4% in 2020, while spending fell only 6.0% and jumped 47.0% in 2021.
- 2022–2023, a volume boom. Visitors almost doubled in 2022 and reached the all-time high in 2023.
- 2024–2025, flat value, falling volume. Visitors slipped 2.1% and then 7.2%, while spending stayed within a 0.6% band around USD 3.02 billion.
Is Turkey Health Tourism Still Growing in 2026?
Not in visitor numbers. January–June 2026 had 563,327 health visitors, 23.2% fewer than the same half of 2025 (733,798). Health spending, though, was 13.4% higher: USD 1,579,518 thousand against 1,392,762 thousand. Both figures are provisional.
One number is easy to misquote. The 563,327 figure is often shown as “the second quarter of 2026”, but it covers six months. TurkStat’s quarterly table gives 302,487 health visitors in Q1 and 260,840 in Q2, which add up to 563,327 exactly. Spending adds up too: 745,904 + 833,614 = 1,579,518 thousand dollars.
What it means in real life: set 563,327 beside a full quarter and 2026 looks about twice as strong as it is. Quote it as “January–June 2026”, and use 260,840 when you mean Q2 alone.
Three more patterns from the quarterly table:
- Q2 2026 alone had 260,840 visitors, 31.2% below Q2 2025.
- Visitors fell year on year in six of the last seven quarters. The exception is Q2 2025 (+1.5%). Spending rose year on year in each of the last four quarters (+26.8%, +7.0%, +15.9%, +11.2%).
- Recent quarters get revised. Q1 2026 spending first appeared as USD 761,523 thousand and now reads 745,904 thousand.
How Much Do Health Tourists Spend in Turkey?
About USD 3.02 billion in 2025, or roughly USD 2,161 per health visitor, up from about USD 1,954 in 2023. That money is the “health” item of tourism income: what visitors staying under a year spend on diagnosis, treatment or spa care.
Treat the per-visitor figure as a trend, not a price list. The health item counts health spending by every visitor, while the visitor count includes only people who came mainly for health. Hotels, food and flights sit under other items.
Practical tip: when you budget your own trip, add flights, hotel nights and any return visit to the treatment quote. Ask each clinic for an itemised written quote you can compare line by line.
So why has spending held up while visitor numbers fell? The official tables record what happened, not why. What they show is clear:
- Volume and value diverged. Health visitors fell 9.1% between 2023 and 2025, and health spending rose 0.5%.
- Turkish citizens living abroad carried more of the total. Their share of health spending rose from 14.0% to 19.6%.
Three explanations fit those numbers:
- A shift towards complex care. Fewer patients for low-cost procedures and a similar number for multi-stage treatment would keep spending up. No official data splits spending by treatment, so nobody can check this.
- Prices and exchange rates. Spending is reported in US dollars. If prices rose faster than the lira weakened, the same treatment costs more dollars.
- New rules. Turkey issued a Regulation on International Health Tourism and Tourist Health in 2025. Timing alone doesn’t prove it changed anything.
In short, the fall in visitors since 2023 is a pattern in the data with several plausible causes. It is not a verdict on quality.
Who Counts as a Health Tourist in Turkey’s Statistics?
A health tourist is a departing visitor whose main purpose was “health or medical reasons (less than a year)”. TurkStat’s Departing Visitors Survey finds them through face-to-face interviews at selected border gates, so the count is a survey estimate.
The rule that matters here: people are counted by the reason for their trip, not by whether they received treatment. TurkStat defines health tourism as travel to receive treatment such as aesthetic surgery, organ transplant, dental treatment, physical therapy and rehabilitation. Three groups fall outside the count:
- Visitors with another main purpose. A holidaymaker who has a dental check-up is recorded under leisure.
- Foreign residents of Turkey. People living in the country for more than a year are residents, not visitors.
- Companions. They aren’t shown separately, so nobody knows how many people travel with patients.
How Many of Turkey’s Health Visitors Are Foreign Nationals?
Most of them: 1,148,179 of the 1,398,580 health visitors in 2025. The other 250,401 (17.9%) were Turkish citizens living abroad. TurkStat publishes the citizens’ count separately, so the foreign-national figure is the total minus that group.
| Year | All health visitors | Foreign nationals | Turkish citizens living abroad | Citizens’ share of visitors | Citizens’ share of health spending |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 1,538,643 | 1,325,359 | 213,284 | 13.9% | 14.0% |
| 2024 | 1,506,442 | 1,342,931 | 163,511 | 10.9% | 13.9% |
| 2025 | 1,398,580 | 1,148,179 | 250,401 | 17.9% | 19.6% |
| Jan–Jun 2026 | 563,327 | 431,577 | 131,750 | 23.4% | 24.8% |
Source: TurkStat, Departing Visitors by Purpose of Visit and Tourism Income tables. Foreign figures and shares are calculated from TurkStat data.
That changes how you should describe the recent decline:
- 2024: the 2.1% fall came entirely from citizens living abroad (−23.3%). Foreign health visitors rose 1.3%.
- 2025: the pattern reversed. Foreign health visitors fell 14.5%, while citizens living abroad rose 53.1%. Foreign health spending fell 6.7% and citizens’ spending rose 41.5%, which kept the total flat.
- January–June 2026: citizens living abroad made up nearly a quarter of health visitors and of health spending.
What it means in real life: the steady USD 3 billion in 2025 rests increasingly on Turkish citizens living abroad. For any claim about “foreign patients”, use the foreign-only figure, which was 13.4% lower in 2025 than in 2023.
Is There an Official Number of Dental Tourists in Turkey?
No. TurkStat’s definition of health tourism includes dental treatment, but dental patients aren’t counted separately, and its tables don’t split health visitors by treatment. No official body counts dental tourists, so any exact figure is an estimate.
The Council of European Dentists’ profile of Turkey shows how far estimates can drift. It says about 2 million health tourists visited in 2024 and roughly 25% were dental. It names no source, and TurkStat’s count for 2024 is 1,506,442. Gaps like this usually come from rounding, a wider definition (every traveller who sees a doctor) or an unnamed source.
Practical tip: when you meet a patient-number claim, ask three things. Is it a main-purpose count or all visits? Does it include Turkish citizens living abroad? Is it visitors, or spending on the health item alone?
Want to know what your own treatment would involve? Send us your questions along with photos or X-rays for a free online consultation, and keep the national figures for context.
How Big Is Health Tourism Within Turkish Tourism?
A small but visible slice: health visitors were 2.19% of the 63,917,057 departing visitors in 2025, and health spending was 4.69% of tourism income from visitors.
The visitor share rose from 1.46% in 2019 to about 2.7% in 2022–2023, then eased as total tourism kept growing. In January–June 2026 it was 2.27% of visitors and 6.23% of tourism income.
The long view is more reassuring. TurkStat’s series starts in 2012 with 265,048 health visitors, so even after two years of decline, 2025 is 5.3 times that level. From 2019 to 2025, visitors grew 10.8% a year and spending 12.9% a year.
Turkey’s health minister has announced a target of USD 20 billion in health tourism revenue by the end of the decade. That is about 6.6 times the 2025 health item. The target may count revenue more broadly than TurkStat does, so the two figures aren’t strictly comparable.
What Do These Statistics Mean If You’re Planning Treatment?
They describe the market, not your case. Use them to test claims and sharpen your questions, not to choose a clinic. A falling visitor count doesn’t make any provider less safe, and rising spending doesn’t tell you what your own treatment should cost.
Three habits help:
- Budget the whole trip. TurkStat’s health item excludes flights, hotels and food, so plan for those and for any return visit. Our pros and cons of dental treatment in Turkey, compared with the UK puts the extras next to the treatment price.
- Check authorisation. The Ministry of Health publishes lists of authorised health tourism providers and authorised facilitators. They say more about a provider than its popularity does, and our guide to the safety risks of bad clinics shows what else to check.
- Ask for a written plan. It should cover the diagnosis, the proposed treatment, the number of visits, aftercare and what happens if a complication needs follow-up after you return home. Our guide to dental implant packages abroad lists what a package should spell out.
Practical tip: ask any dentist how many visits your plan needs, what the quoted price includes, and who handles follow-up once you’re home. Those answers tell you more about your trip than any national average. For dental implants, for example, most of our patients need two visits.
How Can Prof Clinic Help You Plan Treatment in Turkey?
We’re based in Istanbul’s Bahçelievler district. We offer dental treatment, including implants, E-max and zirconia veneers and the Hollywood smile, as well as hair transplant, cosmetic and bariatric procedures. You can share photos or X-rays for a free online consultation and quote.
Our packages can include treatment, medication, VIP transfers and hotels, with structured follow-up over 12 months. The treating dentist makes every clinical decision after examining you in person.
Medical note. This guide presents official statistics and our own calculations for information only. It isn’t medical advice and doesn’t assess any individual provider. Whether a treatment suits you depends on an examination by a qualified dentist. Figures for 2026 are provisional and may be revised by TurkStat.
In short, these statistics are most useful when you match each figure to its definition. The 1,398,580 main-purpose health visitors in 2025 are an official count; dental-specific and “patient” totals are not. Your safest next step isn’t another number but a conversation about your own case.
Ready to talk about your own plan? Ask us on WhatsApp or book an assessment, and we’ll go through what your treatment would involve.
Frequently Asked Questions About Turkey Health Tourism Statistics
How many medical tourists visit Turkey each year?
About 1.4 million in 2025 on TurkStat’s main-purpose count, down from the 2023 record of 1,538,643. The figure includes Turkish citizens living abroad, and foreign nationals alone numbered 1,148,179. Companions aren’t shown separately, so the number of people travelling alongside patients is higher but unpublished.
Is Turkish health tourism still growing in 2026?
Not in visitor numbers. January–June 2026 had 23.2% fewer health visitors than the same half of 2025, while health spending was 13.4% higher. Both figures are provisional, and TurkStat has already revised Q1 2026 once, so note the access date on anything you quote.
How much do health tourists spend in Turkey?
TurkStat’s health item was about USD 3.02 billion in 2025, roughly USD 2,161 per health visitor. Use that ratio to compare years, not as a price. It excludes flights, hotels and food, and it counts health spending by all visitors, not only those who came mainly for health.
Is there an official number of dental tourists in Turkey?
No. TurkStat’s definition of health tourism includes dental treatment, but dental patients aren’t counted separately in its tables. Estimates in circulation come from other sources, so ask where a dental figure comes from before you repeat it.
Why do some sources say 2 million health tourists?
Usually because of rounding, a different definition or an unnamed source. The Council of European Dentists’ country profile gives “about 2 million” for 2024 without a citation, against TurkStat’s 1,506,442. A total that counts every traveller who sees a doctor will always exceed a main-purpose count.
Do falling visitor numbers say anything about clinic safety?
No. The statistics count arrivals and spending, not outcomes, complications or standards of care. A lower count doesn’t make any provider safer or riskier. To judge a provider, check its authorisation on the Ministry of Health lists, who will treat you, and what the written plan says about follow-up.
Where can I check the original tables, and when do they update?
TurkStat publishes the tables as Excel files attached to each quarterly tourism release. The next release, covering Q3 2026, is due on 30 October 2026, and we update this page after each one. Figures here were checked on 9 October 2026.
Sources
- TurkStat (2026), Tourism Statistics, Quarter II: April–June 2026
- TurkStat (2026), Tourism Statistics, Quarter IV: October–December and Annual, 2025
- TurkStat (2026), Tourism Statistics: Metadata (definitions and methodology)
- Council of European Dentists (2026), EU Manual of Dental Practice 2026: Türkiye
- Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Health (2026), Healthcare Providers Authorized by the Ministry
- Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Health (2026), Facilitators Authorized by the Ministry
- Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Health (2025), Regulation on International Health Tourism and Tourist Health (English text)
- AGBI (9 June 2025), Healthy prognosis for Turkish medical tourism
