Problems faced by Iraqi health tourists in Turkey

The main feature of health tourism is the weak elasticity of supply and demand. ‎Because on the demand side; the issue of health comes first for people, it is a ‎necessity to make financial and moral sacrifices in order to heal. On the supply side, ‎in order to provide health tourism services, the facility must be suitable for health ‎tourism and the service providers must be trained or experts in their fields. From the ‎perspective of Türkiye, it is possible to talk about two types of health tourism supply. ‎The first is the services that develop due to the inability of people to receive adequate ‎health services in the places they live and including medical interventions (surgery, ‎inpatient treatment, transport, etc.). The second is services that are not directly ‎medical and include supportive processes (spa/thermal, SPA, rehabilitation, etc.). In ‎some cases, there are also services where that are provided in a mixed form. In Türkiye, with its assets such as geographical location, existing health tourism ‎resources, trained human resources, public and private sector investments, services are ‎provided especially to health tourists from the close vicinity. In this study, it is aimed ‎to determine the views of Iraqi health tourists about the services they receive in Türkiye within the scope of health tourism. As a result of the interviews with 37 Iraqi ‎citizens who received health services in the field of health tourism in Türkiye, it has ‎been determined that hospitals, personnel, medical devices and equipment in Türkiye ‎are sufficient, but communication problems due to language differences are the main ‎problems.‎ Key Words: Health Tourism, Health Tourists, Türkiye, Iraq