By Nazlan Ertan
Now that the summer season is on, Turkey loves to market itself with the usual package: sun, sea, sand and the occasional sex. But for over a decade now, the country’s most reliable tourism magnet has been a silent fifth S: saç/hair. Or more precisely, saç ektirme/hair transplant.
Istanbul, the capital of empires, is now the undisputed capital of follicular resurrection. Clinics line the boulevards like barber shops, offering all-inclusive packages complete with airport pickup, luxury hotels, recovery breakfast buffets, and a multilingual WhatsApp line that replies faster than the police. Tens of thousands fly in each year, many returning home with not just a hairline but a holiday.
It’s not just the price, though $2,000- 4,000 for a full transplant in Turkey is a tenth of what it might cost in London or L.A., it’s the experience. Turkey has transformed hair restoration into a five-star experience, and the market continues to expand. Turkish clinics now cater to Afro-textured hair as well, an area neglected by Western providers. Publications like Daily Trust even rank Istanbul’s top clinics for afro hair, cementing the city’s global follicular appeal.
Saç ektirme is no longer the private indulgence of balding middle-aged men who’ve lost a fight with genetics. It’s aspirational. It’s elite. It’s editorial. Graydon Carter—the famously silver-maned former Vanity Fair editor and the man who christened Donald Trump a “short-fingered vulgarian”—recently confessed in The Guardian: “My biggest disappointment? That I didn’t go to Turkey during the pandemic for one of those male hair treatments.” If even Carter, gatekeeper of high living and low gossip, is gazing toward Istanbul’s clinics, the trend is more than global, it’s cultural canon.
And Turks do it too. Actor Kenan İmirzalıoğlu, pop stars such as Murat Boz and Mustafa Ceceli have done it. Egemen Bağış, the former minister-turned-ambassador, has undergone transplants, possibly inspiring prematurely balding diplomats to take a similar path. In the mid-2000s, Hürriyet once counted eight MPs in parliament with freshly redrawn hairlines; today, it would be too difficult to count. Rumor has it that the two deputies who speak most often on foreign policy - one from the ruling party and the other from the opposition - both had hair transplants.
One notable holdout, at least officially, is politician Muharrem İnce (see elsewhere in the newsletter). Asked about the rumors, he once said: “I don’t want to be like a hormone-pumped strawberry. I think I already look handsome. I’m not considering a hair transplant.” Then again, Mr. İnce is known for his surprises: he vanished from public view on the night of his 2018 presidential defeat, dropped out just days before the 2023 elections, and has recently been implanted back in the CHP, the very party he had previously fallen out of. When it comes to his hair, or his political path, there’s no telling what he can or cannot do next.
Of course, not all is glossy in this boom. The $3 billion medical tourism sector has a darker side: high-volume clinics may prioritize speed over care, leading to unnatural results, overharvesting, and, in some tragic cases, infections or hospitalizations. A Leeds University study found that over 16% of British cosmetic tourists experienced complications, and about 10% of hair transplant work done by the U.K. surgeons now involves repairing jobs botched abroad. Still, thousands board their Turkish Hairlines return flight satisfied, transformed, Instagram-ready. They came for new roots and left with a stronger identity—or at least, a better Tinder photo.
Turkey cannot fix everything: not its troubled economy, not its strained democracy, and certainly not peace in the stormy Middle East - though one suspects that both Egypt’s Sisi and Israel’s Netanyahu, whose thinning crowns have long battled the cameras, can use the services in Istanbul as they stand before Trump’s mane.
But Turkey can fix your hairline. And for many, that’s already a good start in a post-truth, image-is-supreme world.
