Independent · not a clinic · not an agency
Understand your dental treatment options in Turkey.
Clear information about treatment, clinic records and care after you return home. Start with the question on your mind.
Published: · Last updated:
Our own measurement
2,115 reviews we analysed ourselves Reviews collected on
SmileHandbook is an independent, free information site for patients considering dental treatment in Turkey. It is not a clinic or an agency: it sells no treatment and takes no commission.
How this site can help
Read about dental treatment and prepare questions for a dentist. The chat options can help you arrange a free video call with a volunteer dentist. We do not sell or book treatment, and no clinic pays us a commission.
Clinic information you can check
Profiles of dental clinics in Turkey are being prepared. Each will list checkable facts with their sources: district, founding year where the clinic states it, languages, services and certificates. It will add our own count of the clinic's public reviews: how many there are, which languages they are in, which themes recur and how often the clinic replies.
No star average, no ranking, no booking, no price and no recommendation. Where the clinic's own Google Maps listing gives them, a profile will also show the clinic's address, telephone number and opening hours, and photographs the clinic uploaded to that listing itself. No clinic will pay for its profile.
A free video call with a volunteer dentist
Choose a free time for a WhatsApp video call with a volunteer dentist. Melisa helps with the booking. Check the time zone and confirm the number you want the dentist to call. The service confirms a booking only after it is saved. If no time is available, you can ask to be contacted later.
Melisa is not a dentist. A video call does not replace an examination in person, and we do not sell or arrange treatment. Chats are kept for 30 days after your last message; you can delete yours sooner. Our privacy notice explains the records and who handles them.
Who writes and checks the guides
The guides are written by Dt. Esma Özkaya, a dentist, in English, French and Arabic. Our medical editor, Muhammet Sadıç, reads each page before it is approved or held back. The editor did not write the page.
Their names stand at the foot of each page they are responsible for.
The main aim of this site is a panel of independent volunteer dentists for each of its languages, so that a reader can put questions about a treatment plan to a dentist who speaks the reader's own language.
Panel today: one independent volunteer dentist, covering English, French and Arabic.
Prepare the questions that matter to you
Not sure what a proposed material or treatment means? Write down what you want to understand. Use the guides to prepare questions for a dentist who can examine you.
We have not examined you or seen your treatment proposal. These pages can help you prepare; they cannot decide what treatment you need.
Ask about the treatment stages, materials, follow-up care, possible problems after returning home and the details to get in writing.
Diagnose you, write you a treatment plan, give an opinion on your photos or x-rays, publish a ranking or recommend a clinic, or quote you a price. Those need an examination and a person who is accountable to you. A website can offer neither, and we would rather say so than pretend. On this site, a phone number is asked for only if you ask our AI assistant for a video call with a volunteer dentist, and nowhere else; on WhatsApp, the number you write to us from is used.
Read a guide
Treatments
When something goes wrong
Rules and reimbursement
Our research
Glossary
Questions people ask us
The volunteer dentist call is free. We do not sell treatment and clinics cannot pay us for a referral or a place on this site.
A volunteer dentist makes the video call. The assistant helps arrange it; the assistant does not examine you or decide your treatment.
The current volunteer panel covers English, French and Arabic. Availability depends on the times the team has actually made available.
You can ask general questions about treatment terms, a quote's contents and follow-up. The conversation does not replace an examination or provide a personal treatment plan.
No. Reading is free and needs no contact details. For a video call, the booking flow explains the number and language needed, who receives them and asks for your agreement.
Open the contact options. Choose an available time in the chat, check the displayed time zone and confirm your phone number. A call is booked only when the service confirms the saved booking. If no time is available, ask about being contacted later.
How we keep the information independent
Sources you can open
We name the source behind a claim. If we cannot find one, we say so.
We publish our corrections
If we correct a page, you can see what changed. Earlier correction entries stay in the record.
We publish no ranking
We do not rank or recommend clinics. The rating study shows a pattern without linking each average to a clinic. Clinic profiles are separate: public facts with sources, without the study's averages.
We do not take a commission
Clinics cannot pay to appear here. We take no commission from them.
Study, sources and publishing checks
What a high clinic rating can leave out
We counted 2,115 public reviews from six Istanbul dental clinics. Of these, 93.85% gave five stars.
For all the reviews together, the average is limited to 4.75–4.94. This range does not apply to each clinic: three of the six fall outside it. One is lower, at 4.20; two are higher, at 4.97 and 4.95. The study explains the calculation and its limits.
Five clinic averages are close together: 4.81–4.97, a difference of 0.16. The sixth is 4.20. If every other review gave five stars, one one-star review in twenty would bring the average to 4.8. With some middle ratings, fewer would be needed. Similar high scores give you little help choosing between clinics.
Problems reported after patients returned home
We read 50 one-star reviews in full. These were all the one-star reviews with enough text to describe an experience. Some described problems months or years later, including a bridge coming out, teeth breaking and an implant being lost. Very short reviews and reviews without text were not included in this reading.
The data does not tell us when positive reviews are usually written. We cannot say that they generally come before later problems.
We also looked for signs of fabricated reviews and found none. This does not explain why the ratings are so high.
How we check information before publishing
Find the original source
We record where a statement comes from before writing it. If we cannot reach the original source, we record that gap.
Identify the kind of evidence
A regulation, a study and an unconfirmed claim do not carry the same weight. We identify the source type so the wording reflects what it supports.
Keep the wording within the evidence
We do not present a limited source as a general fact. Unsupported statements are removed or left as clearly explained open questions.
Have the page checked
The medical editor reads the page before approval is recorded. The editor is not its author. If the clinical text changes, its existing approval no longer applies.
How a page is approved
Approval is recorded with a date and a technical record of the text that was checked.
Every page with a clinical statement has an approval record. The approval page explains how this works and what happens when a record is missing.
How we check the information
How we check what we publish
The method behind every claim on this site: sourcing, evidence labels, review and correction.
Editorial standards, independence and corrections
Who writes here, who reviews it, how independence is kept and how mistakes are corrected.
Corrections log
Every correction made to this site, in the order it was made. Append-only.
Evidence audit
What share of our published claims carries a primary source — published as measured, including when it is poor.
How a page is approved before it is published
The stages a text passes through before it appears here, the role that signs it, what a signature is made of, and what happens to a page that nobody signs.
Every page on this site
A complete index of what is published in English here, grouped by subject.
Site search
A search box for the pages published here. It runs in the browser, and nothing typed into it is sent anywhere.
The pages behind how we work
Where the method, the editorial standards, the corrections log and the evidence audit sit, and what each of them answers.
- Are you a clinic or an agency?
- Neither. We publish information. We do not arrange treatment, we take no treatment bookings, and we have no clinic partners. Nobody can pay to appear on this site.
- How do you make money then?
- We plan to use advertising later. We do not earn from clinics, referrals or selling your data. A change to this model would be explained here first.
- Do you collect anything about me?
- The chat keeps your conversation for 30 days after your last message, unless you delete it sooner. On this site, your WhatsApp number is requested only for a volunteer dentist video call. On WhatsApp, your sending number is used. No other part asks for contact details. Google Analytics and its cookies run only if you accept them in the cookie banner. Vercel processes your IP address and may keep access logs; we do not build profiles from them.
- Can this site assess my x-ray?
- No. We do not diagnose from photos or x-rays on this site. These guides and general conversations do not replace an examination by a dentist.
- Where do your numbers come from?
- We counted 2,115 public reviews from six clinics. We also read all one-star reviews with enough text to describe an experience. The study explains the method without quoting reviewers or naming which average belongs to which clinic.
- Do you publish rankings or recommend clinics?
- No. The study does not link averages to clinic names or rank clinics. Profiles are separate pages with sourced facts and review counts, not recommendations. They do not repeat the study's averages. You decide which clinic to consider.