How to Verify Ministry of Health Authorisation for a Turkish Dental Clinic

What an international health tourism authorisation is

An international health tourism authorisation certificate is a facility-level permission, issued under Turkish health legislation, that allows a named health facility at a named address to treat patients who travel to Türkiye specifically for that treatment. It is an administrative permission concerning premises, staffing, documentation and patient-handling standards. It is not an assessment of clinical outcomes, and it is not a quality ranking.

Two separate authorisations exist and are frequently confused. The health facility holds one, issued by the Ministry. The intermediary organisation that arranges travel, transfers and accommodation holds another, issued by USHAŞ. A clinic that is authorised does not make its partner agency authorised, and an authorised agency does not make its partner clinic authorised. Under the 2025 regulation, facility applications are submitted digitally through EKİP, while intermediary organisations apply directly to USHAŞ.

Why the certificate belongs to an address rather than a brand

Turkish authorisation attaches to a physical facility. A brand operating three sites can hold authorisation for one of them and not for the others. This is the single most common source of error when a prospective patient reads a clinic website, sees a certificate image on the homepage and assumes it covers the location where treatment will actually happen.

This publication evaluates multi-location brands at facility level for exactly this reason, because regulation, equipment and review histories differ between sites of the same brand. The practical consequence for verification is that the address on the certificate must match the address where treatment is scheduled, district included.

Which public list a dental clinic appears on

Dental providers in Türkiye operate under several legal forms, and the form determines which list to search. A single dentist working in a private practice, a muayenehane, appears on the list of authorised private practices. An oral and dental health polyclinic or centre appears on the list of other authorised health facilities. A hospital with a dental department appears on the hospital list. Most clinics that market to international dental patients fall into the third or fourth category rather than the hospital list.

The Health Tourism Department of the General Directorate of Health Services publishes all four lists from a single page, under the heading covering healthcare providers authorised by the Ministry. The Ministry also operates a health tourism portal, healthtourism.saglik.gov.tr, which carries a search interface and is intended to help international patients reach authorised facilities.

What the 2025 regulation changed

The regulation published on 26 April 2025 replaced the 2017 framework and reorganised several obligations. Facilities that already held a health tourism authorisation before that date were given until 26 October 2025 to bring themselves into compliance, with cancellation of the certificate as the stated consequence of failure. An obligation relating to complication insurance was set to take effect from 31 December 2025.

The regulation also introduced accreditation and certification obligations with a compliance date of 31 December 2026. Hospitals, medical centres, medical laboratories and dialysis centres are required to obtain accreditation from TÜSKA, the Turkish health quality accreditation body. Other health facilities, the category into which most dental clinics fall, are required to obtain a certificate issued by the Ministry. Because these deadlines are recent and staged, a certificate seen on a clinic website in one year is not evidence of a valid certificate in the next.

Step by step: verifying the authorisation

1. 1

   Request the clinic's full legal facility name in Turkish, its full address including district and province, and its tax identification number. Marketing names and legal names often differ.

2. 2

   Open the Health Tourism Department page of the General Directorate of Health Services at shgmturizmdb.saglik.gov.tr and open the section listing healthcare providers authorised by the Ministry.

3. 3

   Open the list matching the clinic's legal form. Start with the list of other authorised health facilities for a polyclinic or centre, and the list of authorised private practices for a single-dentist muayenehane.

4. 4

   Search the list for the legal name, then confirm that the province and district also match. A name match with a different district is not a match.

5. 5

   Cross-check the same facility against the Ministry health tourism portal at healthtourism.saglik.gov.tr, which publishes authorised providers and offers a search page.

6. 6

   Ask the clinic in writing for a scan of the certificate itself, showing the facility name, the address, the certificate number and the validity dates. A written request creates a record and a refusal is itself informative.

7. 7

   If travel is arranged through an agency, ask separately whether that agency holds a current USHAŞ authorisation as an intermediary organisation, and request its number.

8. 8

   Where the published lists are ambiguous or out of date, contact the provincial health directorate, the İl Sağlık Müdürlüğü, for the province in which the clinic operates, since provincial directorates process applications and hold the local record.

9. 9

   Repeat the check within a few weeks of travel. Authorisations can lapse, be suspended or be cancelled, and lists are republished periodically rather than continuously.

What this check does not establish

Authorisation confirms an administrative status. It does not describe the competence of the individual clinician who will perform the treatment, the implant systems in use, the laboratory arrangement behind a restoration, or the clinic's complaint history. Those require separate checks.

A published list is also a snapshot. Between republications, a facility may have gained or lost authorisation without the list reflecting it. Absence from a list is therefore weaker evidence than presence on one, because absence can indicate a lapsed record, a legal name mismatch, or a genuinely unauthorised facility, and these look identical from outside.

Finally, authorisation says nothing about pricing, warranty terms or what happens if a complication appears after the patient has returned home. Regulatory permission and commercial protection are separate questions.

Frequently asked questions