President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced new recruitment for health workers at a ceremony marking the opening of completed facilities and the groundbreaking of new buildings at the Çapa and Esenyurt campuses of Istanbul University’s Istanbul Faculty of Medicine Hospital. “I am sharing with you here the good news that we will issue a notice to recruit 38,000 non-physician staff before 2026 ends,” Erdoğan said.
“Our Health Ministry will announce the timeline and details of the recruitment in the coming days,” he said, adding that the distribution of positions, application requirements and dates would be announced by the ministry. The hiring will be separate from positions for doctors and specialists.
“Medicine has never been seen as an ordinary profession”
Opening his speech by recalling the long history of the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine, Erdoğan said: “Medicine has never been seen as an ordinary profession among us.” Stressing that the faculty is “one of the institutions the Ottomans entrusted to us,” he said: “Continuity is essential in our state tradition.” He said the same spirit had emerged every time in difficult periods, from the 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation to the July 15 coup attempt.
“Patients and bodies were held hostage in hospitals”
Referring to the health system before the AK Party governments, Erdoğan said: “We lived through bad days when those without money could not get health care, the social security system did not work, access to an ambulance was considered a luxury, those who did not pay what our people call ‘knife money’ could not have surgery, and patients and bodies were held hostage in hospitals.” He added: “Providing health services to our citizens in the highest-quality way has always been our priority.”
Facilities opened and launched
The 44,000-square-meter Çapa Internal Medicine Hospital and Esenyurt Hospital were opened at the ceremony. The internal medicine hospital has 186 beds, 39 of them intensive care, 56 outpatient clinics, three angiography units and day-treatment capacity for 41 people. Esenyurt Hospital will serve with 200 patient beds, a total of 50 intensive care beds and 12 operating rooms.
Ground was also broken in Çapa for the seven-story, 20,273-square-meter Orthopedics, Traumatology and Surgery-2 Hospital, which will have 113 beds, seven of them intensive care, eight outpatient clinics and six operating rooms, as well as for the Deniz Abdal Mosque on the campus.
223 billion liras of health investment in Istanbul
Sharing figures on health investment in Istanbul, Erdoğan said: “We have opened 206 health facilities in Istanbul with an investment cost of 223 billion liras. We have reached a total capacity of 45,390 beds in our Istanbul.” Noting that the city has more than 8,000 intensive care beds and over 1,600 dental units, he said total health investment in Istanbul would reach 350 billion liras once ongoing projects are completed.
Stressing that Türkiye has also become a hub for health tourism, Erdoğan said: “In 2025, 2.6 million people visited our country for health services.”
Erdoğan concluded: “I believe that, God willing, our Istanbul Faculty of Medicine will bring healing to our nation for many more centuries. May it be auspicious.” Health Minister Kemal Memişoğlu, Istanbul University Rector Osman Bülent Zülfikar, Communications Director Burhanettin Duran and many guests attended the ceremony.
