Crown Center for Middle East Studies

Few places are more closely associated with medical tourism than Turkey. In 2022 alone, roughly one million people traveled there for hair transplants, spending an estimated $2 billion. In our latest Middle East Brief, Nihal Kayali examines the rise of medical tourism in Turkey and its implications for the country’s universal health care system. She argues that the state’s promotion of medical tourism has intensified inequalities in access to care, as incentives to capture foreign-currency revenues have shifted investment, labor, and provider capacity away from domestic need. The result is a public health care system under growing strain, leaving citizens to contend with worsening access even as Turkey’s health care is marketed abroad.

Counter/Argument: A Middle East Podcast is produced by the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Through conversations with scholars and practitioners encompassing a variety of disciplines and perspectives, each episode will debunk key misconceptions about the contemporary Middle East. "Counter/Argument" is committed to a balanced and dispassionate approach to the region and to making scholarship more widely accessible. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Download, subscribe, rate and review, and most importantly, please share with a friend! 

Image credit: Chae Lee