Hair Transplant Complications in Türkiye: What Claim Exists, and Against Whom

A patient harmed by a hair transplant in Türkiye is not confined to a complaint about poor service. Since 6 May 2023 the procedure has had its own Ministry of Health instrument — the Saç Ekimi Birimleri Hakkında Yönetmelik (Regulation on Hair Transplant Units), published in the Resmî Gazete of 6 May 2023, No. 32182 and since amended twice — and it fixes where a hair transplant may be performed, who may perform each stage of it, and what must be recorded. Against that background the civil claim normally lies against the health institution within which the transplant unit operated, and, on the facts, against the physician under whose supervision and responsibility the procedure was carried out. Where the patient was directed to the clinic by an intermediary, that company may also be a defendant: in 6. HD, E. 2024/949, K. 2025/1215 of 24 March 2025 the Court of Cassation, working from the definition of sağlayıcı in Art. 3(1)(ı) of the Consumer Protection Law No. 6502, held that a contract had been formed within Arts. 14 and 47 of that Law between the consumer and the company which had directed him to a third-party health centre for a hair transplant, and that the company was answerable to him — reversing a decision that had dismissed the claim for want of passive standing. And where the person who actually performed the procedure was not authorised to do so, the position changes again — that engages Art. 25 of Law No. 1219 and Additional Art. 11 of Law No. 3359.

This guide is written for the reader most often affected: someone who travelled to Türkiye for the procedure, returned home, and only afterwards saw that something had gone wrong. It sets out who may lawfully perform a hair transplant and why that single question decides so much; the route a claim takes; the records to preserve; and how the process runs from abroad. It sits alongside the general guide to medical malpractice law in Türkiye, which deals with the standard of care and the burden of proof, and the field as a whole is described on the firm’s health and medical law page.

Who May Lawfully Perform the Procedure

This is the first question in a hair transplant file, and it is not a bedside-manner point. Art. 1 of the Regulation states its purpose as regulating the opening of hair transplant units, the minimum standards for the procedure, the personnel who may work in them and their inspection; Art. 3 grounds it in Arts. 3 and 9(1)(c) and Additional Art. 11 of the Sağlık Hizmetleri Temel Kanunu No. 3359 and in Arts. 355(a), (c), (e) and 508 of Presidential Decree No. 1. Two amendments have since reshaped it: the Regulation published in the Resmî Gazete of 3 November 2023, No. 32358, and the Regulation published in the Resmî Gazete of 12 September 2025, No. 33015. The consolidated text as at 25 July 2026 lists no other amending instrument.

Where: only inside a health institution, and only with a permit

Under Art. 5 a hair transplant unit may be opened only within a sağlık kuruluşu and only after a faaliyet izin belgesi (operating permit) has been obtained. Under Art. 6(1)–(4) the application is made to the provincial health directorate (il sağlık müdürlüğü), physical suitability is established by an on-site inspection and a partial joint technical report, and the permit is then recorded on the institution’s licence or certificate of conformity.

Art. 4(d) defines sağlık kuruluşu exhaustively: hospitals belonging to the Ministry of Health; hospitals belonging to State and foundation universities; private hospitals belonging to real persons and private-law legal persons; tıp merkezleri (medical centres); and poliklinikler (polyclinics).

What is not in the list matters as much as what is. A beauty centre or salon, a hotel, and a physician’s private office (muayenehane) do not appear, so a hair transplant unit cannot be opened in them under the Regulation. That is a statement about the permit, not a prediction about a particular prosecution: the consequences in an individual case are governed by the general provisions dealt with below.

Who: the stages are divided by the Regulation

Art. 9(3), in the form given to it by the amendment of 12 September 2025, splits the procedure in two.

Stage	Who may perform it
Channel opening (kanal açılması)	Physicians and specialist physicians holding the hair transplant applicator certificate; plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery specialists; dermatology (deri ve zührevi hastalıkları) specialists; physicians and specialist physicians holding a medical aesthetics certificate
Harvesting the follicles and placing them into the channels	Those same physicians, or health professionals holding the hair transplant assistant applicator certificate

Two corrections follow, in opposite directions. It is not the case that only plastic surgeons and dermatologists may perform a hair transplant: Art. 9(2) simply exempts plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery specialists, dermatology specialists and holders of a Ministry-registered medical aesthetics certificate from the requirement to hold the separate applicator certificate, and any physician who holds the hair transplant applicator certificate may perform the doctor-only stage. Equally, the position before 12 September 2025 should not be repeated: harvesting is no longer reserved to the listed physicians, and may now be carried out by a certified assistant applicator.

The surrounding paragraphs carry as much weight as the division itself. Under Art. 9(1) only personnel whose certificate has been registered (tescil) by the Ministry may work in a unit at all. Under Art. 9(4) certified assistant applicators work under the supervision and responsibility of the qualifying physicians. Under Art. 9(5), where the procedure is performed under sedoanalgesia or general anaesthesia, an anaesthesia and reanimation specialist must be present. And under Art. 9(6) each qualifying physician may be responsible for at most five application rooms, each of which must have at least two health professionals holding the assistant applicator certificate. Who may become certified is itself controlled: Art. 8, as amended on 3 November 2023, admits only physicians and specialist physicians to the applicator programme, and only the health professionals listed in Art. 4(e) — nurse, health officer (community health), community health technician, emergency medical technician or technologist, anaesthesia technician or technologist — to the assistant applicator programme.

A transitional period is still running. Under Transitional Art. 1(1), as amended on 12 September 2025, health professionals working or to work in hair transplant units may work under the supervision and responsibility of the relevant physician until 31 December 2026; from that date they may continue only on condition of obtaining the assistant applicator certificate. The deadline was previously 6 May 2026. As at 25 July 2026 the transitional period has therefore not expired, and the absence of an assistant’s certificate must be read against that provision rather than in isolation.

The physical and procedural minimum

Art. 6(5) requires, for the opening of a unit: a sterilisation unit within the institution or a bought-in sterilisation service; compliance with the Art. 9 personnel standards; an application room of at least 16 square metres, with easily cleanable and disinfectable surfaces and adequate ventilation and lighting; a photography area outside the application room for pre- and post-procedure follow-up; a patient waiting area, which since 12 September 2025 may be shared with the institution’s general waiting area; and the Annex-1 minimum equipment with the Annex-2 emergency drugs and equipment. The original wording requiring the room to be a yarı steril alan (semi-sterile area) was repealed on 3 November 2023 and should not be quoted as current; the 16 m² minimum remains. Art. 10 governs the procedure itself: instruments and intervention sets must be sterile; the procedure may not be performed without protective eyewear; and only one patient at a time may be treated in an application room.

What must be recorded — and why a patient should care

Two documents are created because the Regulation says they must be, and between them they answer most of the factual questions a claim turns on.

The informed consent form. Under Art. 10(2)(ç) an aydınlatılmış rıza formu must be taken from every patient. Photographs of the donor area and of the area to be treated, taken before and after the procedure, must be attached to it, and the form must be signed by the parties.

The Annex-4 Patient Information Form. Under Arts. 10(3) and 12(1) this form must be completed and archived through the Ministry’s system. It records the patient’s details, the name of the technique used, the number of follicles (grafts) implanted and the area, photographs of the donor and recipient areas taken before the intervention and within the first 72 hours after it, and the names of the team that performed the transplant.

That last item is why the Regulation matters so much to a patient who never learned who was in the room. The identity of the operating team is not a matter for reconstruction from memory; it is a recorded item in a form the institution was obliged to complete and archive.

Art. 12(2) adds a public-facing element: health institutions within which a hair transplant unit has been established are registered on a portal created by the Ministry and published openly on the web, at sacekimmerkezi.saglik.gov.tr. It should be read for what it is — a register of institutions in which a unit has been established — and not as a Ministry endorsement of quality or outcomes.

Unauthorised performance: what the law attaches to it

Art. 11(2) lists the prohibited acts: (a) a unit may not be opened or operated without an operating permit from the provincial directorate; (b) persons holding neither the applicator certificate nor the assistant applicator certificate may not perform hair transplantation; (c) the physical areas, devices and personnel underlying the permit may not be changed without the directorate’s permission. Under Art. 11(1), as amended on 12 September 2025, units are inspected in accordance with the Özel Sağlık Tesislerinin Denetimi Hakkında Yönetmelik (RG 17 November 2023, No. 32372) against the criteria in the Annex-3 inspection and administrative sanction form, and under Art. 11(4) the sanctions in that form are applied where non-compliance is found in units opened by real persons or private-law legal persons.

Above the Regulation sit two statutes. Law No. 1219 requires, in Art. 1, a diploma from a faculty of medicine in order to practise medicine in Türkiye and to treat a patient in any manner whatsoever; Art. 25 punishes a person who treats patients without holding a diploma, or who assumes the title of physician — even where there is no intention of obtaining a benefit — with imprisonment from two to five years and a judicial fine of up to one thousand days.

Additional Art. 11 of Law No. 3359 was added by Law No. 6514 of 2 January 2014, and its first four paragraphs were replaced by Law No. 7496 of 21 February 2024. In that form it provides that, apart from health services given in extraordinary circumstances by persons authorised to practise, until emergency services arrive and continuity is achieved, those who provide, or cause to be provided, health services without a licence or without authority (ruhsatsız veya yetkisiz) are punished with imprisonment from one to three years and a judicial fine of up to twenty thousand days. Those who open service units and health facilities subject to special permission without Ministry permission, or who provide the services delivered there, face an administrative fine whose statutory floor was fixed in 2024 at 250,000 Turkish lira, running up to half of the previous month’s gross service income; failure to keep the records the Ministry determines, or to comply with notification obligations, attracts a further fine with a 2024 floor of 50,000 Turkish lira and a ceiling of 2 per cent of that income. Repetition within one year doubles the fine, and a third occurrence suspends the department or the whole institution for up to ten days. The fines are imposed by governors; suspension of activity is imposed by the Ministry.

On the lira figures. These are the amounts as enacted — 2024 figures in the case of Additional Art. 11. Administrative fines are increased with effect from the beginning of each calendar year by the revaluation rate determined under repeated Art. 298 of the Tax Procedure Law No. 213, under Art. 17(7) of the Misdemeanours Law No. 5326; that paragraph does not apply to proportional (nispi) fines. The figure applicable in a given year should therefore be taken from the legislation in force at the relevant time rather than computed from the statutory floor.

The inspection regulation supplies the administrative consequence. Under its Art. 7, where it is established that health services or diagnostic and therapeutic medical procedures have been provided without authority, permission or a licence: (a) premises holding no licence, permit or activity certificate from any authority are closed by the governorship and a criminal complaint is filed with the public prosecutor against the persons concerned; (b) workplaces holding a licence under other legislation are banned by the governorship from providing health services, a criminal complaint is filed, and the licensing authority is notified so that it may act under its own legislation.

The Claim Route

Characterisation decides the remedies

Turkish law contains no provision expressly characterising a hair transplant contract. The two candidates in the Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098 are the works contract (eser sözleşmesi, Art. 470) and the mandate (vekâlet, Art. 502). Under Art. 471 the contractor must perform with loyalty and care, measured against the conduct in accordance with professional and technical rules to be expected of a prudent contractor undertaking similar work; Art. 506 imposes a corresponding duty on the mandatary.

A consistent line of Court of Cassation decisions has treated hair transplant and aesthetic interventions as works contracts: 15. HD, E. 2017/2151, K. 2017/3693, 30 October 2017, holding that a works-contract relationship was established concerning the hair transplant operation; 3. HD, E. 2021/6849, K. 2021/10475, 21 October 2021 and 3. HD, E. 2022/5772, K. 2022/6666, 15 September 2022, each of which characterises the action as one for damages arising from a works contract (hair transplant) and, on that basis, sends the file to the 6th Civil Chamber — chamber-allocation decisions rather than rulings on the merits, but ones that turn on the characterisation; and 6. HD, E. 2024/1067, K. 2025/1468, 15 April 2025, which states that the relationship covering an aesthetic intervention is in the nature of a works contract, that it therefore differs from the mandate contract governing treatment carried out out of medical necessity, and that whatever method the contractor uses the work must emerge free of defect — by the nature of a works contract, the contractor guarantees the result.

This is a line of authority, not a statutory rule and not an exception-free proposition: there is no unification-of-case-law decision on the point, and characterisation in an individual file remains an argument to be made on the facts. But its practical weight is considerable, because it opens Art. 475: where the contractor is liable for a defect, the employer may choose between rescission (where the work is so defective or so contrary to the contract that the employer cannot use it or cannot in fairness be compelled to accept it), a reduction in price proportionate to the defect, and free repair at the contractor’s entire expense provided this does not require excessive expenditure — with the right to damages under the general provisions expressly reserved. Alongside sits the ordinary tort basis in Art. 49: a person who causes damage by a wrongful and culpable act must make it good.

The consumer layer

Most hair transplant files also run through the Consumer Protection Law No. 6502, because Art. 3(1)(l) expressly counts works (eser) and mandate (vekâlet) contracts, and every kind of contract between a consumer and a person acting for commercial or professional purposes, as consumer transactions. Art. 14 obliges the supplier to perform the service in conformity with the contract. Art. 15(1) gives the consumer, where the service has been defectively performed, a free choice among re-performance, free repair of the work resulting from the service, a reduction in price proportionate to the defect, and rescission; all costs of exercising those rights are borne by the supplier, and damages may be claimed in addition under the Code of Obligations. Art. 16 subjects liability for a defective service to a two-year limitation from the date of performance, even if the defect emerges later, unless a longer period is set by law or contract — and the limitation provisions do not apply where the defect has been concealed by gross fault or fraud.

Forum and pre-step follow. Art. 73(1) gives the consumer courts subject-matter jurisdiction over disputes arising from consumer transactions and from practices directed at consumers; Art. 73(5) allows the action to be brought in the consumer court of the place where the consumer resides; and Art. 73/A(1) makes applying to a mediator before bringing the action a condition of action (dava şartı), subject to the listed exceptions — matters within the competence of the consumer arbitration committee, objections to its decisions, the actions in Arts. 73(6) and 74, and disputes that are consumer transactions but arise from rights in rem over immovables. That step is described in the guide to mandatory mediation in Turkish law. Venue otherwise follows the Code of Civil Procedure No. 6100: the defendant’s residence at the date the action is brought (Art. 6(1)); in tort, additionally the place where the tort was committed, where the damage occurred or may occur, or the injured party’s residence (Art. 16); and, with more than one defendant, the residence of any one of them (Art. 7(1)).

Three limitation periods, and they are not interchangeable. Under Art. 478 of the Code of Obligations, actions brought because the contractor produced a defective work are time-barred two years from delivery for works other than immovable structures, five years for immovable structures, and twenty years irrespective of the nature of the defective work where the contractor is grossly at fault. Under Art. 147(6) claims arising from a works contract are subject to a five-year limitation, except where the contractor failed to perform or performed improperly through gross fault; Art. 147(5) sets five years for mandate claims. Under Art. 16 of Law No. 6502 the period is two years from performance, with no limitation at all where the defect was concealed by gross fault or fraud. Which governs depends on the characterisation and the forum, and they cannot be merged or averaged.

Informed consent — neither a shield nor an irrelevance

Consent is a recurring battleground, and both extreme positions are wrong. A signed form does not end the matter; nor is consent legally beside the point.

Art. 70 of Law No. 1219 requires physicians and dentists first to obtain the consent of the patient, or of the guardian where the patient is a minor or under interdiction, for any procedure they will perform; for major surgical operations that consent must be in writing. Since the addition made by Law No. 7557 on 21 July 2025, consent under that paragraph may also be taken electronically — via an information or electronic communications device, using identity documents capable of verifying identity, biometric methods, or methods permitting electronic identity verification.

The content of the duty is set by the Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği (RG 1 August 1998, No. 23420). Art. 15, as amended on 8 May 2014, requires the patient to be informed about the probable causes and likely course of the condition; by whom, where, in what manner and how the intervention will be carried out and its estimated duration; the other options with their benefits and risks; probable complications; the benefits and risks of refusing; the important characteristics of the drugs to be used; the lifestyle recommendations critical to the patient’s health; and how to reach medical assistance on the same subject if needed. Art. 26 requires, for cases prescribed by legislation and for interventions in which a dispute is medically foreseeable, a consent form containing that information; it must be conveyed orally and the form then signed in two counterparts, one placed in the patient’s file and one given to the patient; and the form is signed by the health professional who gave the information and who will perform the intervention, that professional being responsible for the accuracy of what was said. Art. 24 requires consent for medical interventions, and Art. 31 requires it to be informed as to the subject and consequences of the intervention and confines the intervention to the limits of the consent given.

Read with Art. 10(2)(ç) of the hair transplant Regulation, the questions become concrete: was there a form; did it contain the Art. 15 matters, including by whom the intervention would be performed; were the before-and-after donor and recipient photographs attached; was it signed by the parties; and was a counterpart given to the patient.

The insurance layer, and the arbitration route

Additional Art. 12 of Law No. 1219 requires physicians, dentists and specialists working in private health institutions, or practising independently, to hold professional financial liability insurance covering damage they may cause through medical malpractice and recourse claims against them. For those employed in private institutions the compulsory policy is taken out by the institution; half the premium is paid by the professional and half by the employer, and the employer’s share may not be deducted from the professional’s pay.

Where a policy is engaged, the Insurance Law No. 5684 provides a route parallel to the courts. Under Art. 30(1) the Insurance Arbitration Commission (Sigorta Tahkim Komisyonu) resolves disputes arising from an insurance contract, and for insurances made compulsory by legislation rights-holders may use it even if the institution concerned is not a member of the system. The conditions are specific: a prior application to the insurer and documented rejection in whole or in part, or the insurer’s failure to reply in writing within fifteen working days (Art. 30(13)); no application where the dispute is already before a court or the consumer arbitration committee (Art. 30(14)); and a decision within four months of the arbitrators’ appointment, failing which the competent court resolves the dispute (Art. 30(16)).

That this is a real route for a hair transplant patient is not theory. In 11. HD, E. 2023/1994, K. 2023/3264 of 24 May 2023, a claimant living in Vienna who had come to Türkiye for hair transplant and rhinoplasty operations, and who alleged that the hair transplant had been carried out by unauthorised persons, pursued a claim before the Commission against the physician’s compulsory medical malpractice liability insurer. The Dispute Arbitration Panel awarded damages; the Objection Arbitration Panel set that aside — on the basis that the information forms contained no guarantee of result, that the patient had been informed that further operations might be needed, and that the claimant had failed to prove damage and the insured physician’s fault — and the Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal.

The decision reads in both directions: it confirms the route is open to a foreign-resident claimant, and it shows what the route demands — proof of damage and of the insured’s fault, on documentation that survives scrutiny. Whether a compulsory malpractice policy responds to a purely aesthetic procedure at all, and on what exclusions, is a question of the general conditions in force at the relevant time and cannot be assumed.

Where the procedure was part of health tourism

A separate instrument sits over cross-border cases. The Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik, published in the Resmî Gazete of 26 April 2025, No. 32882, replaced the earlier regulation of the same name of 13 July 2017, which its Art. 17 expressly repealed — so the 2017 text should no longer be cited as the governing instrument.

Its most consequential provision for a patient who has flown home is Art. 6(3): the health facility and the intermediary institution are responsible, according to the type of service provided, for the health services and intermediary services the international health tourist receives while in Türkiye — and complications and medical malpractice (tıbbi kötü uygulamalar) that may arise after the health service provided also fall within that responsibility. Responsibility, in other words, is not framed as ending at the airport.

Three further points recur. Under Art. 5(1) both health facilities and intermediary institutions must hold an authorisation certificate (yetki belgesi) to operate in international health tourism — issued by the Ministry for facilities and by USHAŞ for intermediaries — and under Art. 6(1)(e) a facility may not buy in services that must be carried out by an intermediary from anyone lacking that certificate. Under Art. 6(1)(c), for surgical and interventional procedures performed in an operating-theatre setting within international health tourism the facility must take out complication insurance; whether a particular hair transplant falls within that description is a question of fact. And under Art. 16, improperly kept records lead to suspension of the authorisation certificate for six months, and cancellation if the act recurs within a year. Additional Art. 11 of Law No. 3359, as amended in 2024, confirms that the Ministry’s inspection of health service provision covers every kind of entity falling within international health tourism.

Evidence to Preserve

Most of the decisive material in a hair transplant file exists because a regulation required it to exist. The task is less about creating evidence than about securing documents that are already, by law, someone’s obligation to hold.

The regulated records. The informed consent form with its attached before-and-after photographs of the donor and recipient areas, signed by the parties (Art. 10(2)(ç)) — and the counterpart that Art. 26 of the Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği says should have been handed to the patient. The Annex-4 Patient Information Form, which names the technique, the number of grafts and the area, carries the pre-procedure and within-72-hours photographs, and names the team. Where a document the Regulation requires cannot be produced, that absence is itself a fact of legal significance, and Additional Art. 11 of Law No. 3359 attaches an administrative fine to failure to keep the records the Ministry determines.

Identity of the institution. The party that matters is the sağlık kuruluşu in which the unit operated — frequently not the brand on the website, the social-media account or the invoice. Whether that institution appears on the Ministry portal under Art. 12(2), and whether a hair transplant unit operating permit was recorded on its licence or certificate of conformity under Art. 6, are checkable facts.

Photographs. The patient’s own dated photographs of the donor and recipient areas, taken over time, are often the only continuous record between the 72-hour photographs and the presentation at home. Unedited, unfiltered originals are worth more than a curated selection.

Correspondence. Messaging and e-mail with the clinic and with any intermediary: what was promised before travel, the graft number quoted, the technique described, who was said to be performing the procedure, the aftercare instructions, and the response when the complication was reported. This bears on the Art. 15 duty to inform, on the works-contract characterisation, and on identifying the sağlayıcı. Promotional material should be preserved for the same reason: the Sağlık Hizmetlerinde Tanıtım ve Bilgilendirme Faaliyetleri Hakkında Yönetmelik (RG 29 July 2023, No. 32263) prohibits covert or open advertising in the provision of health services (Art. 5(1)) and prohibits, in Art. 7(1), before-and-after images that compare the effects of treatment and are of a nature to create demand. Additional Art. 11 of Law No. 3359, as amended by Law No. 7557 on 21 July 2025, attaches an administrative fine — 2025 statutory floor of 100,000 Turkish lira, ceiling of 2 per cent of the previous month’s gross service income, revalued annually — to exceeding the limits of promotion and information in health services.

Payment records. Transfer confirmations, card statements and receipts, and in particular who was actually paid: money that went to an intermediary rather than to the health institution is directly relevant to the sağlayıcı analysis applied in 6. HD, E. 2024/949, K. 2025/1215. Under Art. 12(1) of the 2025 health tourism Regulation the facility must issue a sales slip or invoice with an annexed itemised breakdown of the service and its unit prices, and must provide free of charge on request the list of drugs and consumables charged to the patient, the laboratory and radiological results the patient paid for (originals not being given for forensic cases), and prescriptions for items bought externally. The intermediary must likewise itemise accommodation, transport, transfer, interpreting and consultancy charges.

The condition as it stands now. A dated clinical record made by the treating doctor in the patient’s own country, with photographs, describing the present state of the donor and recipient areas and any scarring, infection or loss. This is what a Turkish court expert will work from, in translation, and it is the one category the patient can still improve after the fact.

Acting From Abroad

Jurisdiction and applicable law

The international jurisdiction of the Turkish courts is determined by the domestic rules on venue — Art. 40 of the Private International Law and Procedural Law Act No. 5718 (MÖHUK). The competence rules already described therefore do the work.

On applicable law, Art. 24(1) subjects contractual obligations to the law expressly chosen by the parties; absent a choice, Art. 24(4) applies the law most closely connected with the contract, taken to be the law of the habitual residence — or, for contracts concluded in the course of commercial or professional activity, the place of business — of the debtor of the characteristic performance. The special consumer-contract conflict rule does not assist here: Art. 26(4) excludes, package tours apart, contracts under which the service must be supplied to the consumer in a country other than that of his habitual residence. For tort, Art. 34(1)–(2) applies the law of the country where the tort was committed, or, where the act and the damage occurred in different countries, the law of the country where the damage occurred; and Art. 34(4) allows a claim directly against the insurer of the person liable if the law applicable to the tort or to the insurance contract so permits.

Whether a judgment obtained elsewhere could later be recognised or enforced in Türkiye is a separate question, governed by MÖHUK and dealt with in the guide to enforcement of foreign judgments in Türkiye. It should not be assumed either way in a hair transplant file.

Representation and security for costs

Physical presence is not the obstacle it is often assumed to be. Arts. 191 and 192 of the Notary Law No. 1512 provide that notarial business in foreign countries is conducted by consuls, within the consulate building, in accordance with the Law’s provisions on notarial acts; and Art. 195 provides that the signature and seal of the competent authority of a foreign country appearing on a notarial act duly performed abroad is certified by the consul. A power of attorney can therefore be executed without returning, and the mediation step and the proceedings conducted through Turkish counsel.

Art. 48 of MÖHUK is the point most often discovered too late. Foreign real and legal persons who bring an action, intervene, or institute enforcement proceedings before a Turkish court must provide the security determined by the court to cover litigation costs and the other party’s losses — and the court exempts them from that security on the basis of reciprocity. Reciprocity varies from country to country, so the position for a particular claimant is a question to establish at the outset rather than an assumption to carry into the case.

The regulatory and criminal routes, which run alongside

Two further routes exist, and neither substitutes for a compensation claim.

The inspection route. Under Art. 5(1)(b) of the Özel Sağlık Tesislerinin Denetimi Hakkında Yönetmelik, an olağan dışı denetim is an unannounced inspection carried out by the Ministry or the provincial directorate of its own motion upon a report or complaint (ihbar veya şikâyet), or in respect of media and social-media postings inconsistent with the legislation; as a rule it is to be completed within thirty days at the latest from the assignment of the inspector or inspection team. Art. 2(1)(b) brings persons and organisations that are the subject of unauthorised, unpermitted or unlicensed health service provision within the regulation’s scope. The route is available from abroad, but it produces regulatory consequences — sanctions, suspension, closure — not compensation.

The criminal route. Under Art. 89 of the Turkish Criminal Code No. 5237, a person who negligently causes pain to another’s body or impairment of another’s health or perception is punished — in the wording given to Art. 89(1) by Law No. 7571 of 24 December 2025 — with imprisonment from four months to two years or a judicial fine; the penalty is increased by one half where the act causes, among other things, permanent weakening of the function of a sense or organ or a permanent mark on the face, and is doubled where it causes loss of that function or a permanent change to the face. Under Art. 89(5) investigation and prosecution depend on complaint, except where the offence is committed with conscious negligence (other than the form falling under the first paragraph). Where the allegation is that the procedure was performed by someone not authorised to perform it, Art. 25 of Law No. 1219 and Additional Art. 11 of Law No. 3359 are the relevant provisions. The general shape of that process is described on the criminal law page.

What This Means in Practice

• The first question is regulatory, not medical. Where was the unit, did it hold an operating permit, and who performed the channel-opening stage. Arts. 4(d), 5, 6 and 9 of the 2023 Regulation convert what would otherwise be a general complaint into a breach of a specific, published and dated standard.
• Two documents are supposed to exist. The signed consent form with attached before-and-after photographs, and the Annex-4 form naming the technique, the graft count and the team. Ask for both, in writing, and record what comes back — including nothing.
• Identify the institution behind the brand. The defendant is the health institution, the physician responsible under Art. 9(4), and, where one was involved, the intermediary — which 6. HD, E. 2024/949, K. 2025/1215 confirms may itself be answerable to the consumer under Law No. 6502.
• Do not settle on one limitation period. Two years from delivery, five years for works-contract claims, two years from performance under Law No. 6502, twenty years on the contractor’s gross fault, and no limitation at all where a defect was concealed by gross fault or fraud.
• Consent is a question, not an answer. A signature does not close the file, and its absence does not decide it. What matters is whether the Art. 15 matters were actually conveyed, by whom, and whether the intervention stayed within the limits of what was consented to.
• Distance is a logistical problem, not a jurisdictional one. A consular power of attorney replaces attendance; Art. 48 of MÖHUK and the reciprocity question should be checked before, not after, filing.

The framework that makes a hair transplant claim tractable is unusually concrete: a dedicated Regulation with dated amendments, a defined list of places where the procedure may be performed, a division of the procedure between the physician and certified assistants, and two forms that must exist and must record who did what. What varies from file to file is how much of that record was actually kept, and how much of it the patient secured before the relationship became adversarial. The wider law of medical liability in which these claims sit is covered in the guide to medical malpractice law in Türkiye and across the firm’s health and medical law practice.