For parents · Guide · English
Taking your child to a doctor in Turkey
Every health system has its own unwritten rules, and Turkey's are not the ones you grew up with. There is no gatekeeping referral to get past, emergency departments are open to walk-ins around the clock, and your prescription may never exist on paper. None of that is difficult once you know it — but working it out while holding a feverish child at the registration desk is nobody's idea of a good evening. Here is the whole map, in advance.
Which of the four doors
Turkey gives you four separate ways in, and picking the wrong one is what turns a twenty-minute errand into a five-hour evening. The single most common mistake foreign families make is taking an ordinary cough to an emergency department at nine in the evening — where it will be triaged as non-urgent and left waiting behind genuine emergencies, quite correctly, for hours.
Family physician (aile hekimi)
Turkey's version of a GP, based at a neighbourhood Aile Sağlığı Merkezi (ASM). Free, close to home, and the normal route for routine vaccinations and well-child checks. You are assigned one by address once you hold a residence permit and are registered in the system. Not a paediatrician — a family doctor who sees all ages.
Outpatient clinic (poliklinik)
The right door for anything that can wait until a working day: a lingering cough, a rash, feeding or growth concerns, a second opinion. This is where you see an actual paediatrician. Appointment needed — see booking below. No referral is required to see a specialist in Turkey; you book the child department directly.
Paediatric emergency (çocuk acil)
Open 24 hours, every day, at both state and private hospitals, and you can walk in without an appointment. Larger hospitals run a paediatric emergency separate from the adult one — look for the sign reading çocuk acil rather than joining the main acil servis queue.
Ambulance (112)
Free, nationwide, and the right call for a seizure, breathing difficulty, a child you cannot wake, a serious fall or a suspected poisoning. Do not drive a child in that state yourself — 112 begins treatment on arrival and takes you to a hospital that can receive you. Ask for English; it is not guaranteed at every hour, so keep the address ready.
| The situation | Where to go |
|---|---|
| Routine vaccination, well-child check | Aile hekimi at the ASM, or your paediatrician's poliklinik |
| Cough, rash or tummy ache, child otherwise well | Poliklinik, next working day |
| Fever in a child over 3 months who is drinking and alert | Poliklinik if it can wait; çocuk acil if it cannot |
| Fever of 38 °C or above in a baby under 3 months | Çocuk acil, straight away |
| Persistent vomiting, signs of dehydration | Çocuk acil |
| Seizure, breathing difficulty, unrousable child, major accident | Call 112 |
State, university or private — which suits which situation
All three exist in every Turkish city, and each is genuinely better than the others at something. Cost, waiting time and the likelihood of being understood in English pull in different directions, so the honest answer is that most expat families end up using more than one.
| Type | Cost | English | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| State (devlet hastanesi) | Free or near-free with SGK; modest without | Not reliable, especially at night | Genuine emergencies, routine vaccination, when budget is the deciding factor |
| University (üniversite hastanesi) | In between; private ones charge commercial rates | Usually good — academic staff, international patient offices | Complex or unclear problems, subspecialty opinions, continuity with one doctor |
| Private (özel hastane) | Commercial rates, billed to you or your insurer | Generally yes, and interpreters at the larger ones | Speed, appointment times that suit you, being understood without effort |
One point that catches people out: at a state hospital you are booked to a department and see whichever physician is on duty, whereas at private and university hospitals you book a named doctor and can keep returning to the same one. If continuity matters to you — a child with asthma, a growth question you want tracked over a year — that difference is worth more than the price gap.
Booking an appointment
State hospitals and family health centres — MHRS
All state appointments run through MHRS, the central physician appointment system: mhrs.gov.tr, the MHRS mobile app, or the telephone line 182. You choose province, district, hospital and the Çocuk Sağlığı ve Hastalıkları department, and the system offers you slots.
The catch for foreigners is the identification number. MHRS will only accept a Turkish ID number, which for a foreign resident means the Yabancı Kimlik Numarası — the foreigner ID beginning with 99, issued together with a residence permit. Each child needs their own number and their own booking. If the number is tied to a permit that has expired, registration at the hospital desk will fail even though the booking went through, so check the expiry date before you rely on it.
Private and university hospitals — directly
These sit outside MHRS entirely. You book through the hospital's own call centre or website, choosing the paediatrician by name, and appointments are usually available within days rather than weeks. No identification number is required to book — a passport is enough — which is why this is the practical route for visitors.
If you are visiting rather than living here
Without a Turkish foreigner ID number you cannot use MHRS, so for anything non-urgent a private hospital or clinic is your route: book by phone or online with a passport, and pay at the visit. Keep the itemised invoice (fatura) and the visit report — travel insurers will ask for both, and they are much harder to obtain after you have left the country. In a genuine emergency none of this applies: go to the nearest acil servis, or call 112.
Walking into çocuk acil — what actually happens
You will not be turned away, you will not be asked for a referral, and you do not need an appointment. What you will meet is a sequence that runs the same way in almost every Turkish hospital.
- Registration first (hasta kabul or kayıt). Hand over the child's passport or ID, give a phone number, and take the queue slip. Nothing happens until this step is done — including at private hospitals, where payment or insurance approval is usually settled here too.
- Triage at the door (triyaj). A nurse takes the temperature and a quick look, and assigns a colour.
- The wait, ranked by colour. Your number appears on a screen with the consulting room number. Watch the screen rather than the door.
- Examination, then often a wait for tests and a second review by the same doctor before you are discharged. Budget for that second wait; families frequently assume they are finished after the first consultation and are surprised.
The triage colours, and why they matter to your bill
Every emergency department in Turkey, state and private alike, has sorted arrivals by colour since 2012. It is worth understanding, because it explains both the wait and the invoice.
| Colour | Means | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Kırmızı — red | Immediately life-threatening | Taken straight through; no emergency fee may be charged |
| Sarı — yellow | Needs care, can safely wait a little | Seen in turn; no emergency fee may be charged |
| Yeşil — green | Walking, non-urgent | Longest wait, and may be handled and billed as an ordinary outpatient visit |
Most childhood fevers and coughs are triaged green, and that is the correct clinical decision, not a dismissal. But it is also the reason the same complaint costs nothing at two in the morning when the child is seriously unwell and costs a consultation fee when it could have waited for the clinic. If your child is green and stable, you will usually be seen faster, more cheaply and by a doctor with more time the following morning at a poliklinik.
Who pays what
- With SGK — the Turkish social security scheme, which foreign residents in employment normally join, and which self-employed and some other residents can enrol in — state hospital care for your child is free or close to it, and private hospitals may accept it with a top-up you pay yourself.
- With private or international health insurance, private hospitals bill your insurer directly if they have an agreement with them. Whether yours is accepted is worth confirming before the visit; the international patient office will tell you.
- With travel insurance, you will usually pay at the hospital and claim afterwards. Keep the invoice and the report.
- With nothing at all, state hospital charges are still modest by international standards. A private paediatric emergency attendance, by contrast, can run into the thousands of lira before any test or treatment is added.
Whatever the arrangement, ask what a consultation costs before you agree to it — "Muayene ücreti ne kadar?" Prices are not hidden and staff will tell you plainly; it simply does not occur to anyone to volunteer the figure.
Emergency care cannot be refused
A hospital in Turkey may not turn away a genuine emergency because of nationality, insurance status or ability to pay, and this applies to private hospitals as much as state ones. If your child is seriously unwell, go to the nearest emergency department and settle the paperwork afterwards. Do not spend the drive comparing hospitals.
What to bring
Two piles: the paperwork and the medical picture. The second one is what makes the consultation good.
- Passport or residence permit for the child, and your own ID.
- Insurance card or policy number.
- The vaccination record — from any country, in any language.
- A note of any regular medicines and their doses, and any allergies.
- The child's current weight. Doses here are worked out by weight, not age.
- If there is fever: the readings and the times you took them.
- Photographs on your phone of a rash, a swelling, or an earlier test result. Entirely acceptable and often decisive.
What happens in the room — and the invisible prescription
The examination itself will feel familiar. Three things afterwards may not.
- Your prescription has no paper. Turkey issues electronic prescriptions (e-reçete): the doctor files it into the national system and you give the child's ID number at any pharmacy, which pulls it up on screen. Foreign parents routinely leave the room waiting for a slip that is not coming. If you want a copy — because you are leaving the country, or for your own records — ask: "Reçeteyi yazdırabilir misiniz?"
- Your records follow you. Visits, prescriptions, test results and vaccinations given in Turkey are stored in e-Nabız, the national health record, which a parent can access for their own children. It means the next doctor — anywhere in the country — can see what was done, which is genuinely useful if you move city or switch hospitals.
- Ask for a written report if you may need it elsewhere. A rapor or a discharge summary (epikriz) is what a school, an airline or an insurer will want, and it is far easier to obtain on the day than a month later.
Turkish phrases for the desk and the consulting room
Worth having on your screen before you arrive — the registration desk is where English is least reliable, and it is the step you cannot skip:
| Turkish | English |
|---|---|
| Çocuk acil nerede? | Where is the paediatric emergency? |
| Çocuk doktoruna görünmek istiyoruz. | We would like to see a paediatrician. |
| Randevumuz var. / Randevusuz geldik. | We have an appointment. / We came without one. |
| Pasaportu burada. | Here is his/her passport. |
| Sigortamız var, şu şirket. | We have insurance, with this company. |
| Muayene ücreti ne kadar? | How much is the consultation? |
| Ne kadar beklememiz gerekiyor? | How long will we have to wait? |
| Sıra numaramız kaç? | What is our queue number? |
| Aşıları tam. Aşı kartı burada. | Vaccinations are up to date. Here is the card. |
| Sürekli kullandığı bir ilaç var. | He/she takes a regular medicine. |
| Alerjisi yok. / Şuna alerjisi var. | No allergies. / He/she is allergic to this. |
| Reçeteyi yazdırabilir misiniz? | Could you print the prescription? |
| Rapor alabilir miyiz? | May we have a written report? |
| Faturayı alabilir miyiz? | May we have the invoice? |
| İngilizce bilen biri var mı? | Is there someone who speaks English? |