Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: Your Rights Under Turkish Law

Turkey teeth gone wrong can raise separate questions about the result undertaken by the clinic, the service delivered and the scope of informed consent. Where a clinic undertook to produce particular crowns or veneers, compare that agreement with what was performed. A contractual result claim and a negligence claim have different conditions; neither can be decided from disappointment alone (6098 sayılı Türk Borçlar Kanunu m.470, m.471, m.49; 6502 sayılı Kanun m.13; Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.31).

1. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: Is the Treatment a Works Contract?

Turkey teeth require examination of the result the clinic undertook before the works contract provisions are applied. A works contract is a contract by which the contractor undertakes to produce a work and the customer undertakes to pay a price in return (6098 sayılı Türk Borçlar Kanunu m.470). Where a clinic agreed to produce a particular appearance for a particular price, it undertook a result.

The practical consequence is that a defence built on effort does not answer the claim. The contractor must perform the undertaken obligations with loyalty and care, observing the legitimate interests of the customer, and liability for the duty of care is measured against the conduct, in accordance with professional and technical rules, of a prudent contractor undertaking work in a similar field (6098 sayılı Kanun m.471). The standard is therefore that of a prudent practitioner in the same field, and it sits alongside the promised result rather than replacing it.

1.1. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong Is a Consumer Dispute at the Same Time

Turkey teeth bought from a private clinic are also a consumer transaction, and the two regimes run in parallel rather than in the alternative. A consumer transaction is any contract or legal transaction concluded between a consumer and a person acting for commercial or professional purposes, and the definition names works contracts expressly among the contracts it covers (6502 sayılı Tüketicinin Korunması Hakkında Kanun m.3).

This matters because the consumer statute gives a wider definition of defect and a wider set of remedies than the works contract provisions do. Both are set out below, and the difference between them is the single point most often got wrong.

2. Turkey Teeth Shaved Down: The Consent You Gave Sets the Limit

Turkey teeth that were shaved down beyond what you agreed to raise a question that does not depend on the quality of the result at all. Consent is required for medical interventions (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.24), and the intervention must remain within the limits of the consent the patient gave (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.31).

The same provision fixes the only ground on which the work may be widened without asking. Where the need to extend an intervention arises during treatment, it may be extended without consent only in a case of medical necessity, where not extending it would cause the loss of an organ or leave it unable to perform its function (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.31). Whether an additional tooth preparation fell within the agreed intervention, a necessary routine continuation or that specific exception must be established from the treatment and consent records. A general wish for a different appearance does not identify which additional interventions were agreed.

Consent also has to have been informed before it can have limits at all. When consent is taken, the patient or the legal representative must be informed and enlightened about the subject matter and the consequences of the intervention, and the consent given covers the routine steps that are a necessary continuation of the process (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.31). Information must be given in a way the patient can understand, and outside emergencies with a reasonable opportunity for consideration. Where language or timing is disputed, examine the oral explanation and written form together (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.18).

2.1. Turkey Teeth Consent Form: You Were Entitled to Your Own Copy

Turkey teeth treatment that could foreseeably give rise to a dispute requires a written consent form, and you were meant to leave the clinic holding one. The facility prepares a consent form for the interventions prescribed by legislation and for those medically regarded as likely to give rise to a dispute; the information in the form is conveyed to the patient orally and the form is then signed; it is signed in two counterparts, one of which is placed in the patient’s file and the other given to the patient or the legal representative (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.26).

Three further points in the same provision are worth knowing when the file is thin:

• The form is signed by the practitioner, not by a coordinator. It is signed by the health professional who gave the information and who will carry out the intervention, and that professional is responsible for the accuracy of the information given (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.26).
• The clinic has to keep its counterpart. Consent forms are retained in accordance with the legislation on archives (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.26). A clinic that cannot produce one is not in the same position as a clinic that produces one you dispute.
• Refusal is documented too. In emergencies where an intervention is refused, the declaration is taken in signed form, and if the patient declines to sign, the situation is recorded in a written minute (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.26).

2.2. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong When You Chose the Shade or the Shape

Turkey teeth claims may involve an argument that the patient asked for the bright shade, the square shape or the extra units. The provision it rests on has a condition built into it. The customer cannot exercise the rights arising from a defect where the defect arose from an instruction given by the customer despite an express warning by the contractor, or where it is attributable to the customer for any other reason (6098 sayılı Türk Borçlar Kanunu m.476).

The instruction-based defence requires an express warning. For the instruction-based defence, the express warning and the connection between the instruction and the defect need to be established. Article 476 also covers other reasons attributable to the customer, so absence of that warning does not dispose of every possible defence. The ordinary allocation of proof applies unless a specific rule provides otherwise (Hukuk Muhakemeleri Kanunu m.190).

3. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: What Counts as a Defect

Turkey teeth are defective in the consumer sense on a test that is wider than most patients expect, and it reaches the marketing. A service is defective where it does not begin within the period fixed in the contract, or where it does not carry the features agreed by the parties or the features it objectively ought to have (6502 sayılı Tüketicinin Korunması Hakkında Kanun m.13).

The second paragraph is the one that matters to a patient who booked from a website. Services that do not carry the features notified by the provider, or the features appearing on its internet portal or in its advertisements and announcements, are defective; so are services containing material, legal or economic deficiencies that reduce or remove their value for the purpose of use, or the benefits the consumer reasonably expected from them (6502 sayılı Kanun m.13).

A clinic’s own published claims therefore become part of the standard against which its work is measured. The photographs, the stated materials, the stated number of units and the stated durability are not puffery once the statute treats a divergence from them as a defect. Save the pages you booked from, with their dates.

4. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: Promised Veneers but Supplied Crowns

Turkey teeth gone wrong may involve a difference between the treatment sold before travel and the treatment performed. If the booking described veneers and the clinic later recorded crowns, preserve both descriptions. The legal question concerns the agreed features of the service, the actual intervention and informed consent; the marketing label alone cannot establish the clinical method used (6502 sayılı Kanun m.13; Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.15, m.31).

Compare the file on three points:

• The undertaking: retain the treatment plan, number of teeth, written description, quoted price and the clinic’s own website statements. The provider’s advertised features can be relevant to a defect, subject to the statutory defences for statements it did not originate (6502 sayılı Kanun m.13, m.14).
• The intervention: obtain the treatment notes, radiographs and the record of which teeth were prepared. A patient may inspect the health file and obtain a copy; the right continues to be available through a proxy or legal representative (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.16).
• The information and consent: compare the oral explanation and consent form with the actual work. Patients must be told the method, alternatives and possible complications, and the intervention must stay within consent, including necessary routine steps and the specified medical necessity exception (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.15, m.18, m.31).

For example, a booking message describing limited preparation and a later record describing a different intervention identify a discrepancy to investigate. They do not, without clinical assessment, prove how much tissue was removed, why it was removed or whether professional standards were breached. Technical questions can require expert evidence under civil procedure (Hukuk Muhakemeleri Kanunu m.266).

Use the medical records request guide to organise the request, including foreign identification and the appropriate formal channel. The foreign patient malpractice guide separates the complaint, contractual remedy and compensation routes. A records request should not be mistaken for a notice of defect or for filing the damages action.

5. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: Report the Defect Before Anything Else

Turkey teeth claims under the works provisions have a notice requirement separate from the limitation period. After delivery of the work, the customer must inspect it as soon as the ordinary course of business allows and, if there are defects, must notify the contractor of them within a reasonable period (6098 sayılı Türk Borçlar Kanunu m.474).

The same provision gives you a way to fix what the work looked like before it is touched again: either party may, bearing the cost, request that the work be inspected by an expert and the result established in a report (6098 sayılı Kanun m.474).

The consequence of silence is set out in the next provision and it is severe. After express or implied acceptance of the work the contractor is released from all liability, save for defects deliberately concealed by the contractor and defects that could not be noticed during a proper inspection; a customer who neglects to inspect and to give notice is deemed to have accepted the work (6098 sayılı Kanun m.477).

5.1. Turkey Teeth Defects That Appear After You Fly Home

Turkey teeth defects may become apparent after delivery. The same provision deals with that directly: where a defect in the work emerges later, the customer must notify the contractor without delay, and failing that is deemed to have accepted the work (6098 sayılı Kanun m.477).

Two practical points follow for someone who flew home a few days after the work was finished. Acceptance can extinguish rights arising from defects well before the limitation period runs out, so the notice question has to be dealt with separately from and earlier than the deadline for proceedings. And the standard differs between a defect visible on proper inspection, which must be notified within a reasonable period after delivery, and one that appears later, which must be notified without delay once it becomes apparent.

There is one situation in which the burden falls away. Where the contractor deliberately concealed the defect, liability continues despite acceptance (6098 sayılı Kanun m.477). That is a high threshold and it has to be proved rather than asserted.

The messages you sent the clinic from home, complaining that something was wrong, may already be doing the work the law requires of you. Keep them with their dates, and do not rely on a telephone call you cannot evidence.

6. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: Which Remedies You Can Choose

Turkey teeth give rise to two sets of elective rights, and they are not the same set. Patients and clinics routinely argue about the narrower one while the wider one is available.

	Works contract	Consumer regime
Provision	6098 sayılı Türk Borçlar Kanunu m.475	6502 sayılı Tüketicinin Korunması Hakkında Kanun m.15
Rights	Rescission; price reduction in proportion to the defect; free repair	Re-performance of the service; free repair of the work produced by it; price reduction in proportion to the defect; rescission
Limit on repair	Repair may be demanded provided it does not require excessive cost	Repair or re-performance unavailable where it would bring disproportionate difficulties for the provider, judged against the defect-free value of the service, the gravity of the defect and whether the other rights would cause the consumer a problem
Costs of exercising	Not addressed in the provision	All costs arising from the exercise of the elective rights are borne by the provider
Time limit on performance	None stated	Reasonable time, and in any event thirty working days from the request
Damages	Expressly reserved under the general provisions	May be claimed together with one of the elective rights, under the Turkish Code of Obligations

Under the works contract provisions, where the contractor is liable for a defect the customer may exercise one of three elective rights: rescission, where the work is defective or contrary to the contract to such a degree that the customer cannot use it or cannot in fairness be compelled to accept it; retaining the work and demanding a reduction of the price in proportion to the defect; or, provided it does not require excessive cost, demanding that the work be repaired free of charge at the contractor’s expense, with the right to claim damages under the general provisions reserved (6098 sayılı Türk Borçlar Kanunu m.475).

Under the consumer statute the consumer is free to exercise, against the provider, one of four rights: re-performance of the service, free repair of the work resulting from the service, a reduction of the price in proportion to the defect, or rescission; the provider is obliged to meet the demand the consumer chooses, all costs arising from the exercise of these rights are borne by the provider, and damages may be claimed under the Turkish Code of Obligations alongside. Repair and re-performance are unavailable where they create disproportionate difficulty, judged against the criteria in the provision (6502 sayılı Tüketicinin Korunması Hakkında Kanun m.15).

Where rescission or a price reduction is chosen, the whole of the price paid or the amount of the reduction is returned to the consumer immediately (6502 sayılı Kanun m.15).

6.1. Turkey Teeth Free Repair Has a Thirty-Working-Day Limit

Turkey teeth clinics that agree in principle to redo the work and then let months pass are running out a clock that the statute has already stopped. Where free repair or re-performance is chosen, the demand must be met by the provider within a period that is reasonable given the nature of the service and the consumer’s purpose in using it, and without causing serious problems for the consumer; in every case that period may not exceed thirty working days from the date the demand was addressed to the provider, failing which the consumer is free to use the other elective rights (6502 sayılı Kanun m.15).

That is a date you can calculate. Put the demand in writing, keep proof of when it reached the clinic, and the thirty working days start from there.

7. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: Will a Dentist at Home Work on Them?

Turkey teeth that are failing usually need a local practitioner to look at them, and whether one will take the case on is a clinical decision rather than a legal one. It has legal consequences in three directions, and they pull against each other.

The findings of the practitioner you consult, and the cost of any remedial treatment, become part of the claim. Removing the original work destroys the evidence of what was done, so photographs, radiographs and a written description should be taken before anything is touched, and the removed prosthetic work should be kept rather than discarded.

Treatment elsewhere raises separate questions about the remaining remedy, the expense and the evidence. Article 15 permits elective remedies and damages subject to their conditions; it does not state that visiting another dentist automatically extinguishes every repair, refund or compensation right (6502 sayılı Tüketicinin Korunması Hakkında Kanun m.15). Where further treatment is needed, record the original condition and the new practitioner’s findings. Judicial preservation of evidence may also be relevant if evidence may disappear or become substantially harder to present (Hukuk Muhakemeleri Kanunu m.400).

8. Turkey Teeth: Who Was Allowed to Treat You

Turkey teeth are supplied at facilities that are licensed for a specific activity and staffed on specific terms, and a patient who cannot say who treated them is often describing a breach rather than a memory lapse. Oral and dental health services in the private sector are provided at a practice, a polyclinic, a centre or a hospital, and all four are health facilities within the meaning of the regulation governing them (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.4).

Two authorisations sit behind the door. A licence application is made to the provincial health directorate, and a licensing commission carries out an inspection on site; for a practice or a polyclinic that commission includes at least two dentists, one of them a representative of the professional chamber (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.13). The operating permit comes second, and a facility begins admitting and treating patients only once it has been issued; the facility may not carry on activity anywhere other than the building on which the licence was based (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.14).

Three rules from the same regulation answer the questions patients actually ask afterwards:

• Only a dentist may work in your mouth. Health professionals other than dentists may not carry out an intra-oral intervention in any manner whatsoever, and where one does, the responsible manager and the licence holder are liable, together with that person, for the consequences of the services so provided (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.18).
• Everyone treating you must hold a working certificate in their own name. No health professional without a working certificate issued in their name may work at the facility, and staff must wear a photographed identity card giving their name and professional title where it can be seen (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.18; m.19).
• You could have seen the certificate on the wall. A copy of the dentist’s working certificate, approved by the directorate, must be displayed in the examination room where patients can easily see it (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.14).

One more provision meets a claim patients often relied on when choosing. Dentists may not practise by claiming additional specialty status on the strength of a certificate, a master’s degree or a doctorate beyond the powers their diploma or specialty certificate gives them, and such documents may not be used as specialty certificates in the practice of the profession (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.19).

8.1. Turkey Teeth and Hair in the Same Package

Turkey teeth are often sold alongside a hair transplant as one trip, and where both were carried out at the dental facility the arrangement runs into a flat prohibition: no medical intervention other than oral and dental health services may be carried out at these facilities (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.19). A surgical procedure of that kind belongs at a facility authorised for it, and a failed hair transplant is governed by its own regulation as well as by the works contract regime.

Sedation is the one case where treatment legitimately moves between sites, and the regulation attaches conditions. A dentist practising at a practice or polyclinic may, on written notice to the directorate, carry out diagnosis and treatment under general anaesthesia or sedation at a facility that has a general anaesthesia intervention unit; records must be kept at both facilities, the patient must be told that the costs fall on them and a detailed invoice must be issued, and both facilities are jointly responsible for the diagnostic and treatment services provided to the patient (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.19).

8.2. Turkey Teeth: The Clinic Owes You an Itemised Invoice

Turkey teeth billed as a single package price leave a patient unable to say what was charged for what, and the regulation does not permit that. A sales receipt or invoice must be issued for every patient examined and treated at the facility, and a document showing a detailed breakdown of the health service provided to the patient together with its unit prices must be issued as an annex to it (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.19).

Ask for it. The itemised breakdown is the document that shows how many units were charged for, which is precisely the fact in dispute when a patient says more teeth were prepared than agreed.

9. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: Was the Clinic Authorised for International Patients?

Turkey teeth fitted for a patient who travelled for them fall under a separate authorisation regime, and an ordinary licence to practise is not enough. It is compulsory for health facilities and intermediaries to obtain an authorisation certificate in order to carry on activity in international health tourism services; the certificate is issued by the Ministry for a health facility and by USHAŞ for an intermediary (Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik m.5). The same article adds that a second intermediary office or branch needs its own certificate, that health tourism activity may not be carried on at a branch that has not been authorised, and that the certificate cannot be transferred. A clinic operating under a certificate issued to a different business is therefore not covered by it.

The regulation also fixes standards for the service itself, and three of them reach a dental patient:

• Accreditation or certification. Hospitals, medical centres, medical laboratories and dialysis centres must be accredited by TÜSKA, and facilities outside that list must hold a certificate issued by the Ministry. The transitional provision gives facilities until 31 December 2026 to meet this requirement. As at 30 September 2026, absence of that accreditation or certificate alone should not be treated as expiry of the international health tourism authorisation (Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik m.6, geçici m.1/3).
• Complication insurance, but only for theatre work. It is compulsory for the facility to take out complication insurance for surgical and interventional procedures to be carried out in an operating theatre setting within the scope of international health tourism (Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik m.6). Routine crown and veneer work is not usually done in a theatre, so the requirement will often not reach it; it matters where the treatment did involve theatre-based surgery. Where such insurance exists, the injured party may claim compensation up to the sum insured directly from the insurer, provided the limitation period applicable to the insurance contract has not expired (6102 sayılı Türk Ticaret Kanunu m.1478).
• No services from unauthorised intermediaries. A facility may not take services that fall to an intermediary from persons or organisations holding no authorisation certificate (Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik m.6). If the clinic worked with an unlicensed agency, that is a breach on the clinic’s side of the arrangement and not only on the agency’s.

Responsibility is shared between the two. The health facility and the intermediary are responsible, according to the type of service supplied, for the health services and intermediary services the international health tourist receives while in Turkey, and complications and poor medical practice that may emerge after the service was supplied fall within that responsibility (Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik m.6). The word complication is therefore not an answer in itself, and the agency that sold the package is named alongside the clinic, which matters when the agency is the only party you ever dealt with.

Finally, the facility must run an international health tourism unit charged with admission, registration, diagnosis, treatment, invoicing, discharge, interpreting and the coordination of dealings with intermediaries (Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik m.7). Compare the interpreting and coordination supplied with the required unit functions; the unit must also designate a responsible staff member for the patient (Uluslararası Sağlık Turizmi ve Turistin Sağlığı Hakkında Yönetmelik m.7).

The Ministry of Health’s authorised facility lists provide a separate identity check. Authorisation and service standards do not decide compensation on their own. They establish facts about the facility’s compliance; the contract, the alleged defect and the resulting harm are assessed separately.

10. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: Which Court Hears the Claim

Turkey teeth claims against a private clinic belong to the consumer courts, and the route follows from the classification rather than from any choice. Consumer courts have jurisdiction in actions concerning disputes that may arise from consumer transactions and from practices directed at consumers (6502 sayılı Tüketicinin Korunması Hakkında Kanun m.73), and works contracts are named in the definition of a consumer transaction (6502 sayılı Kanun m.3).

Treatment within a public or state university hospital follows a different route, because claims arising from the services of a public administration are pursued as full remedy actions before the administrative courts rather than as consumer claims (İdari Yargılama Usulü Kanunu m.2/1-b, m.13). The distinction is set out in our Turkish article on claims against private hospitals.

11. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: Arbitration Committee or Mediation First

Turkey teeth claims have a compulsory step before the consumer court, and skipping it gets the action dismissed rather than heard. Which step applies depends on the value of the claim.

Application to the consumer arbitration committees is compulsory in disputes with a value below the statutory threshold, and applications cannot be made to them for disputes above it (6502 sayılı Tüketicinin Korunması Hakkında Kanun m.68). Applications may be made to the committee where the consumer is domiciled or where the consumer transaction took place, and in places with no committee to the district governorship, which forwards them (6502 sayılı Kanun m.68).

The base amount printed in Article 68 is not the current annual limit. The monetary limits in that article are increased at the beginning of each calendar year by the revaluation rate determined under the Tax Procedure Law, with fractions of a thousand Turkish lira disregarded (6502 sayılı Kanun m.68). The amount that applies to your claim is therefore the one in force for the year in which the application is made. Check the Ministry of Trade’s current committee information rather than reading off the historic base amount.

Above the threshold the dispute belongs to the consumer court, and mediation becomes a condition of bringing the action. In disputes heard in the consumer courts, having applied to a mediator before bringing the action is a condition of the action, and the mediation requirement does not apply to matters falling within the remit of the consumer arbitration committee (6502 sayılı Tüketicinin Korunması Hakkında Kanun m.73/A).

The two routes therefore fit together rather than compete: below the threshold you apply to the committee and mediation is not required; above it you mediate first and then sue. The actual amount and year of the application determine the applicable route; the number of crowns or implants does not establish it.

Cost is not a reason to avoid the step. Where the parties cannot be reached, where no meeting can be held because they do not attend, or where they either settle or fail to settle, the mediation fee payable by the consumer is met from the budget of the Ministry of Justice, capped at the two-hour rate in the fee tariff, and where the action that follows succeeds the fee is recovered from the defendant (6502 sayılı Kanun m.73/A).

12. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: Bringing the Claim From Abroad

Turkey teeth claims raise two separate questions for a patient who has gone home: which country’s law governs the dispute, and which country’s courts can hear it. Turkish private international law answers them one at a time.

On the governing law, the starting point is party choice. Contractual obligations are subject to the law expressly chosen by the parties, and a choice that can be understood beyond doubt from the terms of the contract or the circumstances of the case is equally valid (5718 sayılı Milletlerarası Özel Hukuk ve Usul Hukuku Hakkında Kanun m.24).

Most patients never made a choice of law, because the paperwork was a treatment plan and a price rather than a contract with clauses. Where the parties made no choice, the law most closely connected with the contract applies; that law is taken to be the law of the habitual residence of the party owing the characteristic performance at the time the contract was made, or, for contracts made in the course of commercial or professional activity, the law of that party’s place of business, unless in all the circumstances there is a law more closely connected with the contract (5718 sayılı Kanun m.24). The characteristic performance in a treatment contract is the treatment, not the payment, so a clinic operating in Turkey points to Turkish law.

Whether the protection of your home law travels with you is a separate question, and the answer is usually no. Turkish private international law has a protective rule for consumer contracts, but it carries an express exclusion: the article does not apply, save for package tours, to contracts of carriage or to contracts under which the service must be supplied to the consumer in a country other than the country of the consumer’s habitual residence (5718 sayılı Kanun m.26). Dental treatment in Turkey for a patient living abroad is supplied in Turkey of necessity. On the ordinary reading of that exclusion the protective rule does not reach it, and because the special jurisdiction rule for consumer contracts is tied by its own wording to the contracts defined in that article, that rule does not reach it either. The point is one of interpretation and a clinic will not concede it, but a case should not be planned on the assumption that home law follows the patient.

What remains is the general rule on the reach of the Turkish courts. The international jurisdiction of the Turkish courts is determined by the rules of domestic law on venue (5718 sayılı Kanun m.40). So whether a Turkish court can hear the claim is answered by the ordinary Turkish venue rules, which for a consumer dispute point to the consumer court. Living abroad does not prevent the claim from being brought, because a person with litigation capacity may conduct a civil action personally or through an appointed representative, with the required power of attorney submitted by the lawyer. Representation does not determine whether personal participation will be needed for a particular step (Hukuk Muhakemeleri Kanunu m.71, m.76).

One clause to look for before assuming any of this. Where venue is not determined on the basis of exclusive jurisdiction, the parties may agree that a dispute containing a foreign element and arising from obligations shall be heard by the court of a foreign state; the agreement is valid if proved by written evidence, and the action is then heard by the competent Turkish court only if the foreign court holds itself to lack jurisdiction or if no objection to jurisdiction is raised before the Turkish courts (5718 sayılı Kanun m.47). If the paperwork you signed contains a clause of that kind, it changes the analysis and it should be read before anything is filed.

13. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: How Long You Have to Claim

Turkey teeth claims for a defective work have a delivery-based limitation rule; other legal grounds must be examined separately. Where the contractor has produced a defective work, actions brought on that ground become time barred on the expiry of two years from the date of delivery for works other than immovable structures, five years for immovable structures, and twenty years irrespective of the nature of the defective work where the contractor is grossly at fault (6098 sayılı Türk Borçlar Kanunu m.478).

Dental prosthetic work is not an immovable structure, so the two-year period is the starting point, extended to twenty years where the contractor is grossly at fault. Because the works contract provisions expressly reserve the right to claim damages under the general provisions (6098 sayılı Kanun m.475), whether a longer general period applies to a claim framed that way is contested, and the way the claim is framed matters.

A defective consumer service generally has two years from performance unless a longer statutory or contractual period applies; limitation provisions do not apply where a defect was concealed through gross fault or fraud (6502 sayılı Kanun m.16). Mandate claims have a five-year rule, while tort damages have their own knowledge-based and outer periods (6098 sayılı Türk Borçlar Kanunu m.147/5, m.149, m.72). The basis of the claim must be identified before selecting a deadline. Related contract questions are examined in hair transplant disputes.

14. Turkey Teeth Gone Wrong: The Evidence to Preserve

Turkey teeth files are stronger when they are built from documents the clinic was required to produce anyway, because those are documents whose absence is itself a point.

• Your counterpart of the consent form, which the clinic had to hand you when it was signed, and which shows what you actually agreed to (Hasta Hakları Yönetmeliği m.26).
• The sales receipt or invoice with its itemised annex showing the detailed breakdown of the service and its unit prices, which is the document that reveals how many units were charged for (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.19).
• The treatment plan and any written package description, including how many teeth were to be prepared, together with the pages of the clinic’s website or advertising you booked from, which form part of the standard the service is measured against (6502 sayılı Tüketicinin Korunması Hakkında Kanun m.13).
• Clinical images and radiographs before and after, together with the clinic’s records of materials and shade, and the records held at a second facility if any part of the treatment was carried out under sedation elsewhere (Ağız ve Diş Sağlığı Hizmeti Sunulan Özel Sağlık Kuruluşları Hakkında Yönetmelik m.19).
• Correspondence with the clinic and any agency, including messaging application records, which may also be the notice of defect the law requires of you (6098 sayılı Türk Borçlar Kanunu m.474).

Where remedial treatment is carried out after the return home, the new practitioner’s findings and the cost of that treatment become part of the file. Preserving the removed prosthetic work matters too: once the original work has been replaced and discarded, the evidence of what was done in the first place is gone.