Turkey legalizes alternative medicine

“Don’t be late, special herbal solutions are here for you … We have leeches sucking polluted blood, flies healing scars, music and hypnotic methods curing mental patients.” This is not a joke. The Turkish government’s health care transformation program continues to come up with brand-new services.

As in almost every realm in Turkey, major changes are underway also in the health care sector. The idea that "alternative medicine is nothing but witchcraft and charlatanism” is now a thing of the past. In the coming days, Turkish hospitals and other health care facilities will seek to attract patients with marketing materials that would be no different from the one above.

The government has paved the way for the use of traditional medicine in Turkish hospitals, overriding objections by professional organizations such as the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), which rejects alternatives to medicine and treatments that are not scientifically proven.

The Health Ministry’s regulation on “traditional and complementary medicine” took effect Oct. 27. Accordingly, 14 alternative treatments can now be legally practiced: acupuncture (the stimulation of specific points along the skin with thin needles), apitherapy (the use of honeybee products for treatment), phytotherapy (treatments based on traditional herbalism), hypnosis, leeches, homeopathy, chiropractic (massage-like treatment on the muscles, the spine and the skeleton affecting the nervous system), wet cupping, larval therapy (the introduction of live, disinfected maggots into the skin), mesotherapy (the injection of special medications into the skin), prolotherapy (the injection of irritating solutions into an injured spot to provoke regenerative tissue response), osteopathy (nonsurgical treatments of the muscle and skeleton system), ozone therapy (the introduction of ozone and oxygen gas mixtures into the body) and reflexology (massage-like treatment of pressure on reflex areas).