Cosmetic Surgery Malpractice in Türkiye: Why an Aesthetic Procedure Is Judged Differently

Where the aesthetic aspect predominates, the Turkish courts treat the relationship as a works contract, the surgeon guarantees the agreed result, and failure of that result is itself non-performance. The characterisation, the consent burden, the evidence and the foreign patient's position.

Turkish law does not always judge a purely cosmetic operation by the rule that governs ordinary medical treatment. Ordinary treatment fits the mandate contract (vekâlet sözleşmesi): the physician undertakes careful conduct, not a result, and that is why an unsuccessful outcome is not by itself a breach. Where what was sold is a defined aesthetic result, the relationship can instead fall under the works contract (eser sözleşmesi) of art. 470 of the Turkish Code of Obligations No. 6098, under which the contractor undertakes to produce a work. No statutory provision draws that line; it is decided on the facts of the file. The practical consequence is the one that matters: under a works contract the dispute turns on whether the work matches what was agreed, and art. 475 attaches the owner’s elective rights to a defect in the work.

That single shift explains most of what is distinctive about aesthetic-surgery litigation in Türkiye — what is owed, what has to be proved, what remedies are available, and which limitation rule is argued over. This guide sets out the characterisation and why it matters, informed consent and where the burden of proving it sits, the evidence that decides these files, and the position of a patient who travelled to Türkiye for the procedure. It is a companion to the wider guide to medical malpractice law in Türkiye, which deals with malpractice generally, and to the guides on how to sue a hospital or doctor in Türkiye and on what a malpractice claim can recover. The field as a whole is described on the firm’s health and medical law page.

Ordinary treatment or aesthetic procedure — the characterisation that decides the case

The two contracts sit side by side in the Code of Obligations and impose different things. Art. 470 defines the works contract as an agreement under which the contractor undertakes to produce a work and the owner to pay a price for it; art. 471 measures the contractor’s duty of care against the professional and technical conduct expected of a prudent contractor undertaking similar work. Art. 502 defines the mandate as an agreement under which the agent undertakes to carry out a piece of business or a transaction for the principal; arts. 506(2) and (3) impose loyalty and care measured against the conduct of a prudent agent undertaking similar work — a standard of conduct, with no result owed.

The Code itself does not say which model medical treatment falls under. A related rule appears in art. 13(1) of the Medical Deontology Regulation of 1960, which provides that a physician who diagnoses and treats in accordance with the requirements of science cannot be reproached, in deontological terms, merely because the treatment did not result in a cure: a standard of conduct, consistent with the mandate model.

Two clarifications belong with that table, because both are commonly overstated.

The first concerns the burden of proof. The works-contract characterisation does not reverse the burden compared with a mandate. Art. 112 already provides that where an obligation is not performed, or not performed properly, the debtor is liable for the creditor’s resulting loss unless the debtor proves that no fault can be attributed to it — and that applies to a mandate just as much as to a works contract. What actually changes is the content of what the patient must show at the threshold. Under a mandate the patient has to identify a departure from the standard of care; under a works contract the patient points to the promised result and shows it was not delivered. That is a difference in what is in issue, not a difference in who bears the risk of non-persuasion on fault.

The second concerns how far the works model goes. It is not a guarantee that the patient will be pleased: what is owed is the work as agreed. Nor does it remove the defendant’s defences. A damages claim remains subject to art. 112, under which the debtor is not liable if it proves that no fault can be attributed to it, and art. 476 makes the point from the other direction: the owner cannot exercise the defect rights where the defect arose from an instruction the owner gave despite the contractor’s express warning, or is otherwise attributable to the owner.

The test is fact-specific, and the judge applies it

There is no rule that every operation performed by a plastic surgeon is a works contract, and no statutory provision assigns aesthetic procedures to either model. The line the Code draws is between undertaking to produce a work (art. 470) and undertaking to carry out a piece of business (art. 502), and the court applies it on the file — including on what the patient said they went in for and what the clinic promised.

Under art. 33 of the Code of Civil Procedure No. 6100 the judge applies Turkish law of its own motion. The characterisation therefore does not depend on the label the parties, or the clinic’s paperwork, attached to the arrangement; it follows from what was actually undertaken.

Where the works model is applied, the question under arts. 474 and 475 is whether the work matches what was agreed. An expert finding that the intervention was technically correct is therefore relevant but does not by itself answer that question; what result was promised has to be established as well.

Mixed reconstructive-and-aesthetic procedures are therefore the real battleground, and a claim that assumes the answer in advance — in either direction — is a claim that has skipped the first contested issue in the case.

What can be claimed once the work is held defective

If the work is found defective (ayıplı), art. 475 gives the owner a choice between three elective rights:

1. Rescission of the contract, where the work is so defective, or so contrary to the contract, that the owner cannot use it or cannot in fairness be compelled to accept it;
2. Retention with a price reduction proportionate to the defect;
3. Free repair at the contractor’s cost, provided this does not require excessive expenditure.

The article then preserves expressly the owner’s right to claim damages under the general provisions — which is how a defective-work finding and a compensation claim sit together in the same file rather than as alternatives. What the heads of damage are, and how the amount is fixed, is a separate subject dealt with in the compensation guide.

Two adjacent provisions catch claimants out. Art. 474 requires the owner, after delivery, to inspect the work as soon as the ordinary course of business allows and to notify any defects to the contractor within a reasonable time; either party may also require, at its own cost, an examination by an expert and a report on the result. Art. 477 then provides that after express or implied acceptance the contractor is discharged from all liability, except for defects deliberately concealed and those that could not have been noticed on a proper inspection; that an owner who neglects to inspect and notify is deemed to have accepted the work; and that where a defect appears later the owner must notify the contractor without delay, failing which the work is again deemed accepted. In an aesthetic case, where the outcome often declares itself over months rather than days, the timing and the recording of that notification are not a formality.

Informed consent: the burden sits with the physician

Consent is the second axis of these cases, and it runs independently of the contractual characterisation.

Under art. 24(2) of the Civil Code, an interference with personality rights is unlawful unless it is justified by the consent of the person concerned, by an overriding private or public interest, or by the exercise of a power conferred by law. Art. 70 of Law No. 1219 requires physicians to obtain the patient’s consent before any procedure, and art. 24 of the Patient Rights Regulation provides that consent is required for medical interventions. Under art. 6 of the Civil Code each party must prove the facts on which it bases its right, so the physician who relies on consent as the justification has to prove that it was given.

The regulation resists the two absolutes that circulate about consent forms. Art. 18 of the Patient Rights Regulation requires the information itself to be given orally, and art. 26 requires a signed consent form for interventions prescribed by legislation and those medically likely to give rise to a dispute, with the forms kept under the archive rules. Art. 18 also requires the information to be given in a way suited to the individual patient’s social and cultural level. A signed form neither defeats a claim on its own nor counts for nothing; it is weighed with the rest of the file.

The statutory basis is art. 70 of Law No. 1219, which requires physicians and dentists to obtain the consent of the patient — or of the parent or guardian where the patient is a minor or under legal incapacity — for every procedure they perform, and requires that consent to be in writing for major surgical operations. Since the amendment made by Law No. 7557 of 21 July 2025, that consent may also be taken electronically, using identity-verifying documents, biometric methods or electronic identity verification.

What the regulation actually requires

The content of the enlightenment is set out in art. 15 of the Patient Rights Regulation (Official Gazette of 1 August 1998, No. 23420), in the form it has had since 8 May 2014. The patient is to be informed of the probable causes and course of the condition; by whom, where, how and for how long the intervention will be performed; the other diagnostic and treatment options with their benefits, risks and probable effects; the probable complications; the benefits and risks of refusing treatment; the important properties of the medicines to be used; critical lifestyle advice; and how to reach further medical help.

Art. 18 governs how it is given, and it is stricter than the practice in some clinics. The information must be given orally, as a rule by the health professional who will actually perform the intervention — another professional competent to give it may do so only where circumstances make that unavoidable, and the patient must be told why — in language suited to the patient’s social and cultural level, in a suitable and private setting. Except in emergencies, the patient must be allowed a reasonable period — a requirement that is difficult to reconcile with a signature taken on the morning of the operation. The patient may also seek a second opinion, and price information is supplied on request by the provider’s relevant unit.

Art. 26 deals with the form itself. A consent form containing the art. 15 information must be prepared for interventions prescribed by legislation and for those that are medically likely to give rise to a dispute; the contents must be conveyed orally and the form signed; it is signed in two copies, one placed in the patient file and one given to the patient; it is signed by the health professional who gave the information and will perform the procedure; and the health professional concerned is responsible for the accuracy of the information given. Art. 31 adds that enlightenment is essential when consent is taken, and that the intervention must stay within the limits of the consent given — a point with obvious bite where more was done in theatre than was discussed beforehand.

Above all of this sits the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, whose ratification was approved by Law No. 5013, published in the Official Gazette of 9 December 2003, No. 25311. Under art. 90(5) of the Constitution, international agreements duly put into force have the force of law. Two of its provisions matter most here: art. 4 on the professional obligations and standards that any health intervention must meet, and art. 5 on informed consent.

What evidence decides these cases

Aesthetic-surgery files turn on documents assembled long before anyone reaches an expert report.

• The complete medical file — pre-operative assessment, operative note, anaesthesia record, nursing notes, prescriptions, discharge summary and the follow-up record. Consent forms must be kept under the archive rules (Patient Rights Regulation art. 26), and the provider has to prove consent from its own records, so gaps in the file are not neutral.
• The consent documentation, read against arts. 15, 18, 26 and 31 of the Patient Rights Regulation: who gave the information, when, in what language, how long before the procedure, and whether the intervention stayed within the limits of what was consented to.
• What result was actually agreed. This is the pivotal document set in a works-contract case, because it defines the thing that either was or was not delivered. An expert report confirming technical correctness does not by itself show that the agreed result was delivered.
• Before-and-after imagery, and the rules that govern it. Since 12 November 2025 this material is tightly regulated, which incidentally makes it far more useful as evidence.
• The management of any complication — because the probable complications are part of the information the patient must be given in advance (Patient Rights Regulation art. 15), and how they were handled is part of the record.

The imagery point deserves its own note, because almost every online summary is now out of date on it. The Regulation on Promotion and Information Activities in Health Services published in the Official Gazette of 12 November 2025, No. 33075 entered into force on publication and, by its art. 13, expressly repealed the 2023 regulation of the same name. Under art. 5(1) of the new text, covert or open advertising in the provision of health services is prohibited; information may be given only within listed limits, which include a bar on advertising-style posts built on patient or relative thank-you or satisfaction statements, a bar on content that steers patients directly or indirectly to a particular professional or facility, a bar on claiming a “specialist” title on the basis of certificates outside the main and sub-specialties defined by Law No. 1219, a bar on making health services the subject of promotional draws or gifts, and a rule that promotional and information activities may not carry price, discount, campaign or promotion information.

Art. 7(1) then regulates before-and-after visuals in detail. Patient images require the patient’s or guardian’s explicit consent, taken on the visual-content consent form set out in Annex 1 to the Regulation; the patient may view the material in advance and withdraw permission at any time without formality; no payment, discount or gift may be given in exchange for that consent; misleading make-up is prohibited, as is any subsequent technological alteration or retouching; the pre-procedure and post-procedure images must be taken in the same environment and under the same technical conditions, and both the date of the procedure and the dates the images were taken must be stated; images of the patient taken during a medical intervention, procedure or operation may not be shared; sponsored or paid publication of such visuals is prohibited; and domestic promotional visuals must carry a mandatory warning that results may vary from person to person and that detailed advice should be obtained from one’s physician before the procedure. Material that does not meet those requirements is itself a fact in the file.

Forum, mediation and the consumer-law layer

Aesthetic-surgery claims against private providers are consumer disputes, and the Consumer Protection Law No. 6502 brings both characterisations inside it. Art. 3(1)(l) defines a consumer transaction as any contract or legal transaction between a consumer and a person acting for commercial or professional purposes, including works, carriage, brokerage, insurance, mandate, banking and similar contracts — so it makes no difference to the forum whether the relationship is characterised as eser or as vekâlet. A consumer is a natural or legal person acting for non-commercial and non-professional purposes (art. 3(1)(k)); a service is the subject matter of any consumer transaction other than the supply of goods (art. 3(1)(d)); and a supplier includes public legal persons supplying services to consumers for commercial or professional purposes (art. 3(1)(ı)). Art. 2 states that the Law covers every kind of consumer transaction and practices directed at consumers.

The consequences follow directly:

• Jurisdiction. Art. 73(1) gives the consumer courts jurisdiction in actions concerning disputes arising from consumer transactions and practices directed at consumers.
• No court fees for the consumer. Art. 73(2) exempts actions brought before the consumer courts by consumers from the fees regulated in the Fees Act.
• Venue at the consumer’s residence. Art. 73(5) permits the action to be brought where the consumer resides, in addition to the ordinary venues.
• Mediation before suit. Art. 73/A, added by Law No. 7251 of 22 July 2020, makes an application to a mediator a procedural pre-condition in disputes heard by the consumer courts, subject to listed exceptions including disputes within the remit of the consumer arbitration committee and objections to that committee’s decisions. The general framework is set out in the guide to mandatory mediation in Turkish law.
• The arbitration-committee threshold. Where the amount in dispute is small, application to a consumer arbitration committee is compulsory instead (art. 68(1)), and the threshold is revalued each calendar year at the revaluation rate under repeated art. 298 of the Tax Procedure Law No. 213. For the 1 January to 31 December 2026 period it is 186,000 TL, set by the communiqué published in the Official Gazette of 23 December 2025, No. 33116, reflecting the 2025 revaluation rate of 25.49%. That is a jurisdictional line, not a benchmark for what a claim is worth, and it changes every 1 January.

Limitation: describing the framework honestly

There is no settled single period for aesthetic-surgery claims, and any source that gives one without qualification is overstating the law. Four rules are in play:

• Art. 147(6) — five years for claims arising from a works contract, except where the contractor failed to perform, or to perform properly, through gross fault;
• Art. 146 — the general ten-year period, which is what art. 147(6) leaves in place in the gross-fault case;
• Art. 478 — for actions based on the contractor having produced a defective work: two years from delivery for works other than immovable structures, five years for immovable structures, and twenty years regardless of the nature of the defective work where the contractor is grossly at fault;
• Art. 72 — the tort period of two years from learning of both the damage and the person liable, and ten years in any event, which defendants routinely plead in the alternative.

Art. 148 provides that the limitation periods laid down in its section of the Code, which includes arts. 146 and 147, cannot be varied by agreement. Which period governs turns on how the claim is framed and on any finding of gross fault; the deadline in these cases is argued, not assumed.

Where insurance and the criminal track sit

Compulsory professional liability insurance stands behind aesthetic practice in the same way as behind other specialties. Supplementary art. 12 of Law No. 1219, added by Law No. 5947 of 21 January 2010, obliges physicians, dentists and specialists working in private health institutions or practising independently to carry medical professional financial liability insurance covering damage caused by medical malpractice and recourse claims. For those working in private institutions the policy is taken out by the institution and half the premium is borne by the practitioner, and the employer’s share may not be deducted from the practitioner’s pay under any name.

Two details are worth stating because the opposite is often assumed. First, the Tariff and Instruction annexed to the compulsory medical malpractice insurance rules does not set one figure for all practitioners: it sorts specialties into risk groups in its Annex-1 and fixes a separate maximum cover and premium for each. Under the communiqué published in the Official Gazette of 7 August 2025, No. 32979, in force from 1 November 2025, the total payable under a single contract may not exceed 9,000,000 TL. The per-event cover and the premium depend on the risk group the specialty falls into; the group tables are published as images in the annex and are revised periodically, so the applicable group and the current amounts must be read off the tariff in force at the relevant date rather than assumed. Second, clause A.3 of the General Conditions, in the form it has had since 26 July 2014, lists only four categories outside cover — activity outside the insured’s professional activity as bounded by legal or ethical rules; activity outside the responsibility area of the institutions within the policy, save humanitarian assistance; all administrative and judicial fines, penalties and penalty clauses; and claims arising from experimentation outside the framework set by legislation. Cosmetic and aesthetic procedures are not among the exclusions.

Criminal exposure, where it arises, runs on a separate track through a permission filter and does not affect the civil claim. Supplementary art. 18 of Law No. 3359, added by Law No. 7406 of 12 May 2022 and amended by Law No. 7496 of 21 February 2024, applies Law No. 4483 to investigations of physicians, dentists and other health professionals working in public or private health institutions and foundation universities in respect of medical acts performed in the exercise of the profession; permission to investigate is given by the Professional Liability Board established within the Ministry of Health, a seven-member body chaired by a Deputy Minister; the time limits in art. 7 of Law No. 4483 apply doubled; and the Board’s decisions may be challenged before the Ankara Regional Administrative Court. It governs criminal investigation permission and public-sector recourse decisions only — it is not a gateway to, or a filter on, a compensation claim, and patients do not apply to it. Where the same facts also found a criminal complaint, that proceeds under general criminal law rules alongside the civil action.

The position of a foreign patient

A patient who travelled to Türkiye for an aesthetic procedure is in the same legal position as a patient resident here: the treatment was given in Türkiye, the claim is governed by Turkish law, and it is pursued before the Turkish courts. Four features of the framework bear on that situation specifically.

The consumer-law layer applies in the same way. Nothing in arts. 2 or 3 of Law No. 6502 conditions consumer status on nationality or residence; what matters is that the person acted for non-commercial and non-professional purposes and contracted with a supplier acting professionally. The fee exemption in art. 73(2), the mediation pre-condition in art. 73/A and the annual arbitration-committee threshold apply on the same terms.

The consent analysis is patient-specific, and that cuts both ways. Because art. 18 of the Patient Rights Regulation requires the information to be given orally, by the professional who will perform the intervention, in a way suited to the patient’s social and cultural level and with a reasonable period allowed before the procedure, an explanation given in a language the patient did not follow — or given minutes before theatre — is a recognisable issue rather than a rhetorical complaint. It is also, for the same reason, an issue that has to be established on the record rather than asserted.

The Biomedicine Convention applies. Because its ratification was approved by Law No. 5013 and international agreements duly put into force have the force of law under art. 90(5) of the Constitution, its professional-standards requirement in art. 4 and its informed-consent requirement in art. 5 are available in a Turkish court without any need to invoke foreign law.

Promotion aimed at patients abroad is separately regulated. Art. 8 of the 12 November 2025 Regulation creates a narrow health-tourism carve-out: facilities and intermediaries holding a Ministry authorisation under the International Health Tourism Regulation (Official Gazette of 26 April 2025, No. 32882) may run sponsored promotion in official languages other than Turkish, on separate outward-facing channels, and may publish patient stories, comments or thank-you statements there with documented explicit consent. The carve-out is bounded: promotion aimed at creating demand among people living in Türkiye is prohibited, domestic audience targeting may not be selected, and automatic audience targeting must be disabled. A foreign patient is therefore likely to have seen material that is lawful for that audience and would not be lawful domestically — which makes what was promised, and in what terms, a matter to be preserved rather than assumed.

Physicians’ own professional rules point the same way. Art. 8 of the Medical Deontology Regulation provides that the professions of medicine and dentistry, and treatment institutions, may not be given a commercial character, and bars the physician from self-advertisement and from procuring thank-you notices of an advertising nature in newspapers and other publication media.

What this means in practice

Aesthetic-surgery litigation in Türkiye is decided on issues that are settled early and rarely revisited.

• The characterisation is the first contested question, not a formality. Whether a defined aesthetic result was what was sold determines what is in issue, and under HMK art. 33 the judge applies the law of its own motion, so the paperwork cannot fix it in advance.
• Under a works contract the case is about the promised result. A report confirming the intervention was technically correct does not by itself answer whether the agreed result was delivered.
• The works model has limits. It is not a guarantee of satisfaction, and art. 112 for damages and the owner-instruction rule in art. 476 remain open to the defendant.
• Consent is proved by the physician, not disproved by the patient (Civil Code arts. 6 and 24(2)) — and it is proved from records, which is why gaps in the file work against the provider.
• The defect-notification rules bite. Inspection and notification within a reasonable time under art. 474, and notification without delay of a later-appearing defect under art. 477, are conditions of the elective rights, not administrative detail.
• Do not assume a limitation period. Four rules compete, and art. 148 forbids varying the periods in arts. 146 and 147 by agreement.
• Check the year on every figure. The consumer arbitration threshold changes every 1 January; the insurance cover figures are revised periodically. A number without a date attached is not usable.

The texts of every law and regulation cited here, as consolidated and in force, are published on the Presidency’s official legislation database, Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi. For more on navigating clinical negligence in Türkiye, explore our health law practice and companion guides on hair transplant complications, dental malpractice claims, medical malpractice compensation, and how to sue a hospital or doctor in Türkiye.

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