In this presentation, Zach Selch outlines key considerations for entering the Turkish medical market. He discusses Turkey’s ambiguous geopolitical classification—often placed between Europe and the Middle East—and recommends managing it as a European market due to cultural and business nuances. He provides macro‑economic data (≈80 million people, $2.2 trillion GDP, $27 k per‑capita) and compares its size to Texas and its per‑capita income to Malaysia. Selch highlights the disease profile, noting that Turkey faces lifestyle‑related conditions such as respiratory disease, cancer, high smoking rates (≈50 %), and obesity/overweight prevalence (≈25 % obese, 60 % overweight), rather than communicable diseases of poverty. He describes rapid middle‑class growth and a massive hospital expansion plan, aiming to double bed capacity from ~200 k to ~400 k through public‑private partnerships serving both private insurers and the Turkish Social Security system. Regulatory entry is simplified: a CE mark suffices for market access, but all documentation must be localized into Turkish. The talk concludes with a call to action for companies seeking assistance in scaling international sales.
Chapters
A few other things about the Turkish medical market. One thing is it's always interesting how you're going to divide it up. Is it part of the Middle East? Is it part of Europe? Who's going to be the regional manager for it? Because it's not quite an Arab country. It's not quite a European country. And what I found is typically the Turks would rather be part of Europe rather than part of the the Middle East. But very often, they get pushed into the Middle East and then they find themselves with everybody else speaking Arabic. So they're sort of like Israel. They fall someplace that isn't quite the Middle East and isn't quite Europe. So you have to look at it that way. What I've typically done is I've put them into Europe and I've had them managed by Europeans rather than Arabs. On the other hand, they are a Muslim country. On the other hand, They're typically not— well, they don't speak Arabic. They're not typically as religious for the most part, the business people you deal with, as Arabs from the Gulf. So that's something you want to keep in mind. Turkish economy, 80 million people, about $2.2 trillion GDP, something like $27K per capita GDP for the population. Which means the size is something like Texas. The per capita GDP is something like Malaysia, more or less, to put that in perspective for you. And when you take a look at it, the diseases people have here are not poor people diseases. They're more like affluent country. They're lifestyle diseases. Pulmonary diseases, respiratory diseases, cancer, those type of things. About half the people here smoke. About a quarter obese, about 60% are overweight. So you do have more lifestyle diseases rather than communicable diseases, communicable diseases, waterborne diseases, nutritional diseases, other types of diseases of poverty. So you got to keep that in mind. And what are they looking at right now? They're really building up new hospitals for the working, for the middle class. 30 years ago, when I started to come to Turkey, when you came in from the there were still thousands, tens of thousands of mud huts, mud brick huts in between the airport and downtown Istanbul. People lived like that. Grandparents and parents of people you're going to deal with today in Turkey lived in a dirt hut with no electricity and no indoor plumbing. Now virtually everybody in the country has indoor plumbing, 99% indoor plumbing, running water. Most people have a connection to a sewage grid. Everybody has electricity, very high literacy. The middle class has gone a huge way in the past 30 years, and those people want good medical care. So we're building up more hospitals. What you're going to see is we're going— Turkey's going from about 200,000 beds of hospitals to an aim of about 400,000 beds. And most of those additional ones are going to be public-private partnerships driven by— Private sector. the public sector working with the public sector to create more hospitals for people both who will have private insurance and who will have the local Turkish Social Security. Turkey a few years ago went with the CE mark. So now even if you have FDA, it doesn't matter, but you have to have CE. But once you have CE, you're in. As long— the only thing you need really to get into the Turkish market from a regulatory perspective is CE. And to localize your documentation, so everything has to be in Turkish. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help. When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
