In Istanbul, a bustling Turkish metropolis that straddles the Bosphorus (a famous waterway linking Europe and Asia), men with bloody and bandaged scalps are a common sight. You can see them walking along lively shopping streets or posing in front of the city’s iconic landmarks.
Istanbul has become a global center for hair transplants. There are around 5,000 clinics in the city, and they serve patients from all over the world. But people have different opinions on whether Istanbul can keep its title as the world’s hair transplant capital.
Winter is the peak season for Istanbul’s hair transplant clinics, and they are all fully booked. Aydin Kesti, a 27-year-old man from Zurich, is one of the patients. He is lying on a treatment couch, a bit dazed from the painkillers given through a drip. Medical staff are carefully putting hair follicles into his scalp.
Kesti says he’s doing this for his ego. He thinks his experience at the hair transplant clinic has been great. He combined his hair transplant procedure with a short holiday in Istanbul. He was attracted by the city’s reputation and a recommendation that led him to choose the ASMED hair transplant clinic.
Istanbul’s many hospitals don’t just deal with scalp hair anymore. They also treat beards, moustaches, eyebrows, and sometimes even chest hair. In some places, you can book a nose job or other cosmetic procedures along with a hair treatment.
The Serkan Aygin clinic says that the demand for hair transplants has grown a lot in recent years. The clinic has a lot of art on its walls, and the process is almost like an assembly line.
Shaven-headed men sit at the clinic’s coffee bar, waiting for the next part of their treatment. Others have already had the procedure, as their scalps with blood spots show.
Hair transplants, which used to be a private procedure, have now become mainstream. Patients show off their new hairlines on social media, and many clinics work with influencers to get more customers. Women are also increasingly getting hair restoration treatments, breaking a long-standing stereotype.
Even though Turkey’s hair transplant industry attracts patient-tourists from all over the world, not every person gets perfect results. Online forums have complaints about botched procedures. Some people say their hair grows in the wrong direction, the density is not good, or the transplanted follicles fall out after a few years.
Still, Turkey’s reputation as a health tourism destination remains strong. According to the state tourism association Türsab, 1.5 million health tourists visited Turkey in 2023. Hair transplants were the second most popular procedure among them.
Koray Erdogan, a doctor and the founder of the ASMED clinic, says, “There are as many good as bad clinics in Istanbul.” When he opened his clinic in 2001, it was normal to remove whole strips of skin from the back of the head. In the early 2000s, his clinic started removing individual hair roots without taking out parts of the skin and leaving a scar. Erdogan calls this a “revolution for hair transplantation.”
This new method spread quickly in Turkey. But in Europe and the United States, people were skeptical about it. In 2011, when Erdogan presented his technique in Boston, he felt that he wasn’t taken seriously. He says that this actually worked in Turkey’s favor. Turkey’s willingness to adopt the innovation, along with lower costs, gave the country an advantage.
Despite being a pioneer in the hair transplant industry, Turkey’s leading position faces challenges. Health tourism, which used to be very successful, is not living up to expectations. The Ministry of Health says that current figures are lower than earlier forecasts.
In 2023, according to the national statistics authority, Turkey made about $2.3 billion from health tourism. But this is much less than what the Türsab Tourism Association predicted a decade ago. They thought the revenue would be around $21 billion to $26 billion by now.
Erdogan also points out that hospitals in Europe now offer hair transplant procedures for about $2,000. This was unthinkable a few years ago. With more affordable options closer to home, fewer patients feel the need to travel to Turkey. Erdogan says, “The golden age in Turkey is coming to an end.”
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