For parents · Guide · English
Moving to Turkey with children
Relocation checklists are usually written by people thinking about shipping containers and tax residency. This one is written from the consulting room, about the part that only becomes visible when a child is unwell in a new country and nobody can tell you what they had, when, or in what dose. Most of it takes an afternoon — but almost all of it is far easier to do before you leave than after you arrive.
The records to bring — and the one everybody forgets
Nothing needs to be an original, nothing needs an apostille, and photographs on your phone are entirely acceptable in a consulting room. What matters is that the information exists at all, because a paediatrician meeting your child for the first time is otherwise working blind.
- The vaccination record. The document you will be asked for most often — at school enrolment and at every paediatric visit. Any country's card, in any language, is fine. Have it translated into Turkish before you need it.
- The growth chart. This is the one families leave behind, and the one that cannot be reconstructed. A single height and weight measured here tells a doctor very little; two years of plotted points tell them a great deal — whether a small child has always been small or has recently fallen away from their own line. Ask your current practice to print or export the chart before you deregister.
- Specialist letters and discharge summaries for anything ongoing — asthma, allergy, epilepsy, prematurity, a heart murmur someone once mentioned.
- Allergy or asthma action plans, in the wording your child already knows. These get rewritten locally, but the starting point matters.
- Recent test results, particularly anything abnormal that was being watched, so it is not repeated from zero.
- A list of regular medicines with their generic names — see below for why the brand name alone is not enough.
The first-year insurance gap
This is the single most expensive thing to discover late, so it is worth being blunt about it. Turkey's state health scheme is SGK, and there are two ways a foreign family enters it.
| Your situation | When SGK starts | The children |
|---|---|---|
| A parent employed in Turkey | From the start of employment — the employer registers you | Normally covered as dependants on that parent's registration |
| Not employed here — retired, remote-working, self-funded | Voluntary application only after one full year of continuous legal residence | Private or international cover for that whole first year |
And there is a circularity that surprises people: applying for a residence permit already requires you to hold health insurance. So the first year runs on a private or international policy no matter which route you are on — the question is only whether the employer is paying for it.
Read that policy from a paediatric angle before you sign it, not from a general one. The clauses that actually matter to a family with young children are rarely the headline figures:
- Are outpatient visits covered, or only hospital admissions? Children generate outpatient visits constantly and are admitted rarely.
- Are routine vaccinations and well-child checks included, or excluded as preventive care?
- Is there a waiting period before cover begins, and does an illness that starts during it count as pre-existing afterwards?
- Which hospitals are actually in network near where you will live — not in the city generally, but near your address and your child's school?
- Does it cover a newborn if you are expecting, and from which day?
Getting into the system: the 99-number, e-Nabız, and your aile hekimi
Turkish healthcare is unusually digital, and once you are inside it the convenience is real. But there is a gate, and it is a number.
The 99-number
The Yabancı Kimlik Numarası — foreigner identification number, always beginning with 99 — is issued with a residence permit. It unlocks state hospital appointments through MHRS, the national health record, family physician registration, and the electronic prescription system that pharmacies read off a screen. Every child needs their own; it is not shared with a parent, and a child without one cannot be booked into a state hospital. Until then you are on private hospitals, which book on a passport — see the guide to taking a child to a doctor in Turkey for how that works in practice.
e-Nabız
Turkey's national personal health record. Once your child has an identification number, every visit, prescription, laboratory result and vaccination given anywhere in the country lands there, and a parent can access their child's record. Set it up in your first weeks rather than your first year: it means the next doctor — in another hospital, another city, at two in the morning — can see what was already done. It is also where you view and change your assigned family physician.
Your assigned family physician
Turkey assigns every registered resident an aile hekimi at a neighbourhood Aile Sağlığı Merkezi, based on your registered address — you do not choose one, you are given one, though you can change it afterwards through e-Nabız. Routine vaccinations and well-child checks there are free. Worth knowing that a family physician sees all ages and is not a paediatric specialist; most expat families end up using the family health centre for routine vaccinations and a paediatrician for anything to do with development, feeding, growth or illness.
School enrolment and the aşı kartı
Schools in Turkey, state and private alike, ask to see the vaccination record — the aşı kartı — as part of enrolment, and some also ask for a health report. A foreign record is accepted; it does not have to be a Turkish card. The friction is almost never the medicine. It is that enrolment has a deadline, translations take days, and the card is in a box on a ship.
If doses are missing, or the foreign schedule does not line up with the Turkish one, that is an ordinary consultation rather than a problem: the two schedules are reconciled so nothing is repeated unnecessarily and nothing is missed. The national schedule, how it differs from the US, UK and EU ones, and what happens to a course started abroad are all covered in the guide to the vaccination schedule in Turkey.
Do this before the school asks
- Get the vaccination record translated into Turkish while you still have time — not in the week enrolment closes.
- Photograph every page, both sides, and keep it in your phone.
- Book a paediatric appointment to review the record before term starts, so any missing dose is given with time to spare rather than in a rush.
- Ask the school in writing exactly which documents they require — health report requirements differ between schools, and between state and private.
Your child's medicines
Bringing them in
- Personal-use quantities only — enough for the move and a sensible buffer, not a year's supply.
- Original pharmacy packaging, with the label showing your child's name, the medicine, the strength and the dose.
- Carry the prescription, and ideally a short letter from your doctor saying what the medicine is for.
- Keep it in hand luggage, not the hold.
- Controlled medicines — strong painkillers and certain psychiatric medicines among them — are treated more strictly and may need permission arranged in advance. Check with a Turkish consulate before you travel rather than at the airport.
Replacing them here — write down the molecule, not the brand
This is the detail that saves a wasted afternoon. Brand names do not travel: the medicine your child knows by name almost certainly exists in Turkey under a different one. A Turkish pharmacist can match the active ingredient instantly but may never have heard of a foreign brand. So ask your doctor, before you leave, to write the generic name and the strength alongside each brand — paracetamol rather than only Calpol, salbutamol rather than only Ventolin.
Two further things differ here. Turkish prescriptions are electronic: the doctor files them into the national system and you give your child's identification number at the pharmacy, so no paper slip is handed over. And doses for children are calculated by weight, so keep an up-to-date weight — the dose that was right at your last address may not be right six months later.
Who looks after them here
Two useful facts about how Turkish paediatrics is shaped:
- No referral is needed to see a paediatrician. You do not go through a family doctor first as you would in the UK or much of Europe — you book the child department directly. Ask for Çocuk Sağlığı ve Hastalıkları, which is what the sign actually says; pediatri is understood but is not the department name.
- Paediatrics runs to 18. A fifteen-year-old is still seen in the child department here, not by an adult physician — which surprises families from countries where paediatric care ends earlier.
If your child is well, there is no medical urgency to be seen. There is still a good case for a first appointment in the first month or two: it establishes a doctor who knows your child before an emergency, gets the foreign vaccination record reviewed while no deadline is pressing, transfers the growth history onto the charts used here, and gives you a name to call at nine in the evening. Bring the folder — that visit is mostly about reading it.
The settling-in months
Two things routinely worry parents in the first months, and neither is usually a medical problem.
- Everyone gets ill. A child starting a new nursery or school in a new country meets a new set of ordinary viruses, and a run of colds through the first autumn is expected rather than a sign that something is wrong. It settles.
- Sleep, appetite and mood wobble. A move is a large event for a small person, and unsettled sleep, clinginess or a fussy few weeks at the table are common. What is worth raising with a doctor is anything that is not improving over weeks, weight that is falling away, or a child who has stopped doing things they could do before.
Two practical points specific to Turkey while you settle: most households here do not drink the tap water even though it is treated and chlorinated — see the diarrhoea and vomiting guide for what that means for babies and formula — and summers are hotter than most arriving families plan for, which the summer guide covers.
A first-month checklist
Before you fly
Vaccination record translated. Growth chart printed or exported. Specialist letters and action plans gathered. Regular medicines listed with generic names and strengths. Repeat prescriptions filled for the move. Health policy checked for outpatient cover and network hospitals. Everything photographed into one shared phone folder.
First few weeks
Residence paperwork under way so each child gets a 99-number. Note the nearest hospital with a çocuk acil — before you need it, not during. Save 112 in both parents' phones. Locate your neighbourhood pharmacy. Confirm what the school requires, in writing.
First couple of months
e-Nabız set up for each child. Aile hekimi checked, and changed through e-Nabız if the assigned one is inconvenient. A first paediatric appointment booked, records in hand. Any missing vaccine doses scheduled. A diary note for the one-year mark, if voluntary SGK will apply to you.
Turkish phrases for the paperwork
The registration desk and the family health centre are where English is least reliable, and both are unavoidable:
| Turkish | English |
|---|---|
| Türkiye'ye yeni taşındık. | We have just moved to Turkey. |
| Çocuğumun aşı karnesi burada, yurt dışından. | Here is my child's vaccination record, from abroad. |
| Aşılarını yurt dışında yaptırdık. | The vaccinations were given abroad. |
| Eksik aşısı var mı? | Are any vaccinations missing? |
| Aile hekimimiz kim? | Who is our family physician? |
| Aile hekimimizi değiştirmek istiyoruz. | We would like to change our family physician. |
| Yabancı kimlik numarası aldık. | We have received a foreigner ID number. |
| Okul için sağlık raporu gerekiyor. | The school requires a health report. |
| Bu ilacın buradaki muadili nedir? | What is the equivalent of this medicine here? |
| Etken maddesi şu. | The active ingredient is this. |
| Sürekli kullandığı bir ilaç var. | He/she takes a regular medicine. |
| Boy ve kilo takibini yaptırmak istiyoruz. | We would like height and weight followed up. |
| Özel sigortamız var. | We have private insurance. |
| İngilizce bilen biri var mı? | Is there someone who speaks English? |