“They set a trap for health tourism”

Dr. Köksal Holoğlu, Executive Board Chairman of the Türkiye Health Tourism Development Council, said that as Turkish health tourism made a serious advance, reports discrediting it began to appear. The trigger was a story in the British newspaper The Sun, in which a reporter posing as a patient recorded a Turkish surgeon, Dr. Serkan Süleyman Aslan, with a hidden camera during a consultation at a hotel promotion event abroad, and accused him of touching her without consent.

What the council says

Türkiye has 4,226 health facilities holding a health tourism authorisation, Holoğlu said. “Türkiye has made an important advance in health tourism worldwide. In response, reports discrediting Turkish physicians began, above all in Britain. Turkish physicians are a brand today, because they are well trained, knowledgeable, experienced and of high quality. But look at the reports: simple statements without detail, ‘I went to Türkiye and it went badly.’ According to health statistics in the United States, 678 complications in every 100,000 operations are accepted as normal. So it is unclear whether those who say it went badly suffered a physician’s error or an ordinary complication. Of course unlicensed practice has to be stopped. But these reports do not reflect reality. In 2023, when we expected growth, Turkish health tourism shrank by 30 percent, and the cause is entirely these reports.”

Dr. Aslan also said the report was intended to hold back the rise of health tourism in Türkiye.