What happened
On 29 September the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery released its global survey for 2025: 17.9 million surgical and 17.3 million non-surgical procedures performed by plastic surgeons worldwide, with a country-by-country breakdown. Türkiye has its own page in the report, and for the first time I can put numbers next to what patients ask me every week: how big is Turkish aesthetic surgery, who comes here, what do they have done, and where is it done.
The short version: Türkiye is the ninth largest aesthetic surgery market in the world by procedure count, one of the top destinations for patients from abroad, and one of the countries where the operations most often happen in hospitals rather than offices. Those are three different facts, and they mean three different things for a patient deciding whether to fly here.
What changed this year
This is the first edition of this article. ISAPS publishes its survey every year, usually in the autumn, and I will update this page rather than write a new one each time, so that the year-by-year table at the end grows and the comparisons stay in one place. From next year this section will say what moved: Türkiye’s rank, the hospital share, the foreign-patient share and the procedure mix.
The common misconception
The misconception, in both directions, is that volume tells you about quality. One camp reads “ninth in the world” and “a third of patients from abroad” as proof that Türkiye is safe; the other reads the same numbers as proof of a factory. Neither follows. Procedure counts describe demand and capacity. What tells you about safety is where the surgery is done, by whom, and how the patient is selected and cared for afterward. The ISAPS report has data on the first of those, some on the second, and none on the third. So I will show what it says, then say what I add from the inside.
The clinical reality
Türkiye is a large market, and its shape is unusual. ISAPS counts 794,390 surgical procedures in Türkiye in 2025, 4.4 percent of the world total and ninth place behind the United States, Brazil, Japan, China, South Korea, Germany, Italy and Mexico. The order of procedures inside that number is what an experienced eye notices. Eyelid surgery leads with 102,410, sixth in the world. Rhinoplasty is second with 76,190; liposuction third with 74,290. Then come breast lift (58,330), breast augmentation (54,910), facial fat grafting (49,780) and tummy tuck (46,170). For a country of this size, breast lift in third place worldwide and tummy tuck in fourth are striking, and they are consistent with what I see: a large share of the patients coming here have lost weight, often a lot of it, and want their body restored rather than decorated. The restoration trend I wrote about in September is visible in the Turkish table.
Seven in ten operations here are done in a hospital. This is the number I would put on the wall. ISAPS asked surgeons in each country where they operate. In Türkiye, 70.6 percent of procedures are performed in a hospital, 26.2 percent in an office facility and 2.7 percent in a free-standing surgical center. For comparison: the United States 37.9 percent in hospital and 36.5 percent in offices; Germany 32.1 percent in hospital and 41.1 percent in offices; Italy 30.8 percent in hospital; the Netherlands 9.4 percent in hospital and 74.7 percent in surgical centers; the United Kingdom 81.7 percent in hospital; Brazil 74.2. A hospital is not a guarantee, and I have written about a Brazilian hospital that had no intensive care unit. But a hospital is where an anesthesiologist stays through the night, where blood and an intensive care bed are on the same corridor, and where a complication at 3 a.m. is a walk down the hall rather than an ambulance ride. Patients from Germany and the United States, in particular, should notice that the setting they are flying to is more often a hospital than the setting they are flying from. I operate in one, and I do not accept combined body surgery anywhere else; the reasons are in my article on combined surgery.
A third of the patients are not Turkish, and they come from my three biggest markets. Turkish surgeons in the survey reported that a median of 15 percent and an average of 32.4 percent of their patients came from abroad, with Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States as the three leading countries of origin. Only three surveyed countries report a higher average foreign share: the Dominican Republic, Tunisia and Mexico, each serving a large neighbor. Türkiye serves patients who fly four hours from Frankfurt or Manchester and ten from New York. That is why the specialty here is organized around the traveling patient, from airport transfer to the hospital night to the fly-home timeline, in a way it is not in a country where 8 percent of patients are foreign. It is also why the questions a foreign patient should ask are different: not only “who is my surgeon” but “who sees me the morning after, and who do I call once I am home”. My recovery planner exists because of the second question.
The numbers also show what Türkiye is not. Buttock augmentation with fat, the procedure the safety societies have spent seven years reining in, is at 18,430, a modest figure next to 74,290 liposuctions; implant removal is 8,930 against 54,910 augmentations. There is no Turkish number in the report for the procedures done outside plastic surgery, in clinics run by other specialties, and those exist here as they exist everywhere. The survey counts what board-certified plastic surgeons report. It does not count the package clinic that books the surgeon after the flight is paid for. When a foreign patient asks me whether Türkiye is safe, the honest answer is that Turkish plastic surgery, in a hospital, by a plastic surgeon you have spoken to, is as safe as the same operation in Hamburg or Leeds, and that the report’s numbers describe exactly that setting. It cannot describe the other one.
Popularity is earned, and it has to be defended. Ninth in the world, a foreign share few countries match, a hospital rate the largest markets do not reach: these are the reasons Türkiye has become a hub, and they are also the reasons the hub attracts imitators who have none of them. The way a patient protects herself is unchanged by any of it: a named surgeon with a plastic surgery board and a society membership she can verify, a hospital she can name, an examination before the anesthetic, and a plan she helped write. I have written a longer guide on how to choose a plastic surgeon; the ISAPS report does not change a line of it. It only confirms that in Türkiye those conditions are the norm inside the specialty, not the exception.
The practical takeaway for patients
Ask where the operation will take place and what is on the same site: an anesthesiologist through the night, a blood bank, an intensive care unit. In Türkiye the answer should be a hospital, because that is where seven in ten operations already happen.
Ask which society your surgeon belongs to and check the member directory yourself. ISAPS, the source of this report, publishes one; so does the Turkish Society of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons.
Ask what happens after you land at home. A surgeon who works with international patients every week has an answer ready, with a timeline and a WhatsApp number; one who does not will improvise.
Read the procedure list as information about you, not about the country. Breast lift and tummy tuck are large here because weight-loss patients come here; if that is you, you are in the right place. If you want a buttock augmentation with fat, look at how small that number is and ask why.
Honest limits
The ISAPS survey is a questionnaire answered by plastic surgeons and extrapolated by a research firm; it is the best global data that exist, and it is still an estimate. The foreign-patient figures are what Turkish surgeons reported, not immigration counts, and “a third of patients from abroad” is an average: some practices see few foreign patients and some, including mine, see mostly foreign patients. The hospital percentage says where the operations happen, not how well; a hospital with no intensive care unit is a hospital in the survey. And nothing in the report measures outcomes, which is the number every patient actually wants. I have written this from the data and from my own practice, and I have said which is which.
If you are deciding whether to come to Istanbul for surgery and want to know whether what you have in mind belongs in a hospital session, and with whom, send unedited photographs and a short medical history to +90 544 772 0772. The surgical team reviews them the same day.
Dr. Mustafa Aydınol is a plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgeon in Istanbul and a member of ISAPS.
Türkiye in the ISAPS survey, year by year
| Survey year | World rank | Surgical procedures | Share of world | In hospital | Foreign patients (average) | Top three procedures |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 9 | 794,390 | 4.4 percent | 70.6 percent | 32.4 percent (median 15) | Eyelid surgery, rhinoplasty, liposuction |
Source: ISAPS International Survey on Aesthetic/Cosmetic Procedures, country tables for Türkiye. A row is added each year when the new survey is published.
Sources
- International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. ISAPS International Survey on Aesthetic/Cosmetic Procedures Performed in 2025: worldwide totals, country rankings, procedures by location for Türkiye, practice-setting and foreign-patient tables. Published 29 September 2026. Link
- American Society of Plastic Surgeons. 2025 Plastic Surgery Statistics Report, for the restoration trend referenced. Link
- Triana L, Palacios Huatuco RM, Campilgio G, Liscano E. Trends in surgical and nonsurgical aesthetic procedures: a 14-year analysis of ISAPS statistics, including the medical tourism recommendation to choose a board-certified plastic surgeon and an accredited facility. Aesthetic Plast Surg, 2024. DOI
