“We offer the world’s best services with our well-trained and experienced medical personnel, specialized hospitals, thermal springs and spas. Most importantly, we do this for the most reasonable prices,” he said in an interview with Today’s Zaman on Friday. “It is not only medical treatment for our patients. They also have the finest quality vacations here,” he added.

TUHETO’s president said they have recently engaged in an aggressive promotion campaign, mainly in Kazakhstan, Dubai, Azerbaijan, Switzerland and Libya. He underscored that an immense demand has emerged in countries where the opportunities that Turkey has to offer have been discovered as a result of their previous work. He also said TUHETO is planning to employ foreign students who are studying in Turkey and considering careers in the field of tourism, in order to boost the effectiveness of their efforts abroad. There are currently an estimated 5,000 foreign students in Turkey. Artukarslan noted that they had a very successful meeting with dozens of those students in İstanbul last week, adding that they plan to stay in touch with them. “The only reason for Turkey, which is one of most important destinations for sea, sand and sun tourism in the world, to not be so successful in the fields of health, nature and culture tourism is lack of promotional activities. There is also room for growth in the fields of shopping and education tourism in Turkey,” Artukarslan said, adding that they regularly report progress to PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.  TUHETO will introduce its promotion campaign in the US next year under the guidance of famous Turkish-American cardiothoracic surgeon Mehmet Cengiz Öz, more widely known as “Dr. Oz” from his television show.