You’ve decided to travel for dental treatment and your destination is Turkey — but you’re not sure which dental centre in Turkey will be best for you. There are many important points to consider when looking for one, and our guide to choosing a reliable dental centre in Turkey is a great companion to this article.
Before you start looking for a good dental centre in Turkey, you must be clear about the services you require. When you consider how regularly you and your family will need to visit, it should be a place that satisfies you in terms of the quality of service and the friendliness of the staff. It’s advisable to see a dentist every six months, for good reason: the point of a good dental clinic isn’t that you’ll always have problems, but that any potential problems can be caught and prevented early.
Dental Centre Reviews in Turkey
Generally, all dental clinic websites have their own reviews, but that doesn’t mean much on its own — you need validation to see whether they are genuine patient reviews. Trustpilot is one of the best review-validation systems online. Trustpilot is also trusted by Google as a partner, and you might additionally check a clinic’s Google Business reviews — but be aware that Google has little protection against fake reviews, whereas Trustpilot is very strict about them.
How to Check If Reviews Are Genuine
You can often spot fake reviews by their content: short sentences like “very good”, “super”, or “the best”. Genuine reviews include details such as the dentist’s name, the date, the specific procedure, the outcome, and how the patient felt afterwards.
Video Reviews
Video reviews may be the best proof of all. It’s very hard to fake a video review of dental treatment, so it’s well worth checking a dental centre’s YouTube channel.
Trustpilot
Once you Google the clinic you’re interested in, you’ll most likely see its Trustpilot reviews. If they don’t have any on Trustpilot, try to find other review sites via Google. Smile Dental Turkey uses Trustpilot exclusively, because we want to publish our reviews only on trusted, verified platforms.
Google Business
Google Business reviews are a good clue to a clinic’s local reputation. Click the “show all reviews” button to see them all — Google will translate them into your language automatically. Google Business can be tricky, though: Google doesn’t ask for verification or check reviews, so you should still consider whether the reviewers are real.
Before & After Photos
Another way to find a good dental centre in Turkey is to look for “before & after” photos. A good clinic will have a patient gallery of results that prove successful treatments. Check the dates and video reviews — some clinics may use fake before-and-after photos, so you can even run a Google image search to check whether they’re using photos that are actually the work of other clinics. Every dental clinic should have realistic before-and-after photos; if a clinic doesn’t, don’t consider them, even if they offer you a very good price. You can browse our own before & after gallery to see what to look for.
The Clinic’s Dentists & Staff
The biggest problem with finding a good dentist online is missing information. Some dental clinic websites don’t mention any dentists or oral surgeons at all. A good dental clinic should have biographies of its experienced dentists, and sometimes its wider staff. Many clinics simply claim to be very experienced and well-known — but it’s a bad sign when they give you no information to back it up.
Also, many medical tourism companies claim to be dental clinics. Be wary of these, as you’re more likely to have a problem with them down the line.
At Smile Dental Turkey, we are proud of Uğur Gültekinler, D.D.S., our oral surgeon Özkan Özkaynak, D.D.S., Ph.D., and all our other dentists — you can see their CVs and full details on our dentists page.
A good dental clinic will have an in-house surgeon, an endodontist, a periodontist, an oral & maxillofacial radiologist, and any other specialists that patients commonly need. For specialists a clinic can’t employ full-time, they’ll often have them on-call or on a retainer. The point is that if you’re choosing a good clinic for your family, you should first confirm it offers the dental services patients commonly require.
Clinic Details & Credentials
All dental centres in Turkey must be registered with the Turkish Dental Association, and a clinic treating international patients should hold an official health-tourism permit. Under Ministry of Health regulations, clinics are required to have this permission to treat medical tourists.
Some dental clinic websites don’t provide this information — and such a website could simply be a marketing agency selling leads to clinics, so don’t risk your dental trip with unknown centres. Clinic photos and clinic information matter, too. You shouldn’t travel somewhere for dental implants if they don’t have 3D tomography: X-rays, CBCT tomography, and CAD/CAM are all important technologies required for great dentistry.
Prices & Hidden Costs
There’s a common saying that “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” You should certainly compare prices, but also beware of very cheap offers. Some dental centres may quote a lower treatment price but then charge for hidden extras such as temporary teeth, injections, or X-rays — so you may end up paying more than at other clinics. Asking about any hidden costs is the best thing to do before you decide. You can see our transparent, all-inclusive dental treatment prices as a benchmark.
Most people don’t know the difference between metal-porcelain crowns and zirconium crowns. They both have porcelain on them, but the metal ones are the cheapest and can look less natural. So make sure you ask about the material — don’t just ask for “porcelain crowns or veneers” without checking exactly what that means.
Unless you live in an affluent area, you’ll most likely want dental services from a clinic where the charges are affordable — so, as you do your due diligence, don’t forget to find out about the fees. In short, look for a clinic that is well equipped, whose staff are properly skilled, and where patients are made to feel at home.
Warranty Terms
It’s good to think positive, but in dentistry anything can happen — at the end of the day, dentistry is part of your healthcare. Always ask what warranty terms a dental centre offers. Any clinic with medical-tourism accreditation should offer warranty terms for its patients, so make a point of asking for them. AACI-accredited Smile Dental Turkey offers a “No Worries” warranty for the first year, along with treatment warranties for our patients — you can read our full warranty terms here.
Location & Travel
Turkey is a very big country, and every part of it has beautiful holiday destinations — but not every city has direct flights from the UK. Try to find a clinic in Istanbul or Antalya, where direct flights are available all year round. All-year flights also mean you can travel in the winter months, when flights and accommodation can be more affordable. Our all-inclusive packages take care of your hotel and transfers so you don’t have to worry about the logistics.
Nowadays every business has an Instagram account. If a clinic doesn’t have one, skip them for now. If they do, check the dates on their before-and-after photos and their other posts. Businesses can buy fake “likes”, but they can’t buy genuine mentions and
Özkan Özkaynak D.D.S., Ph.D. is an Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon at Smile Dental Turkey, bringing over two decades of surgical expertise to our team. He earned both his D.D.S. and Ph.D. in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery from Ankara University, and previously served as an Assistant Professor at Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi before joining Smile Dental Turkey in 2010.
His surgical expertise covers advanced dental implants, bone grafting, and complex wisdom tooth extractions. He has also contributed to several peer-reviewed journals in his field.
Dr. Özkaynak is a native Turkish speaker with a B2 level of English.
