Türkiye will hire 38,000 non-physician health workers before the end of 2026, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced on Saturday at the opening of new hospital buildings at Istanbul University’s Çapa and Esenyurt campuses.
Erdoğan said the Health Ministry would announce the schedule and details of the recruitment. He did not specify which roles would be filled or how applications would be made, but "non-physician" staff in Turkish public hospitals typically include nurses, midwives, technicians and other support personnel.
New Çapa and Esenyurt facilities
The newly opened Çapa Internal Medicine Hospital covers 44,000 square metres and has 186 beds, 39 of them in intensive care, along with 56 outpatient clinics and a day treatment unit for 41 patients. The building sits on earthquake isolators, and outpatient services have already started. Cardiology, infectious diseases and chest diseases departments will also serve patients there, according to Habertürk.
At the Esenyurt campus on the city’s western side, a facility with 200 patient beds and 50 neonatal care beds was opened. Its 12 operating theatres carry out robotic and complex surgery.
Erdoğan also laid the foundation stone for the Çapa Orthopaedics and Surgery-2 Hospital, a seven-storey building that will have 113 beds, including seven in intensive care, and six outpatient clinics when complete.
He said 206 health facilities with 45,390 beds and more than 8,000 intensive care beds had been opened in Istanbul, and that ongoing investments in the city would total 350 billion lira when finished. He also congratulated the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine ahead of its 200th anniversary in 2027, tracing its roots to Ottoman-era medical institutions.
Staffing pressure on public hospitals
The announcement follows a separate plan to create 31,054 contract health posts for 2027, most of them for specialist doctors. Demand on the public system remains heavy, with doctor visits hitting a record 1.139 billion in 2025.
Çapa, in Istanbul’s historic Fatih district, is one of the country’s best-known teaching hospitals. Foreign residents can use state and university hospitals through Türkiye’s general health insurance or private cover; our explainer on health insurance for foreign residents sets out the options, and the Living in Istanbul guide covers healthcare across the city.
Sources
Photo: Rapsar / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
