President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke at the Opening and Mass Groundbreaking Ceremony of Istanbul University Çapa Campus Internal Medicine Hospital and Esenyurt Hospital, held at Istanbul University Çapa Campus:
Previously, our people would go abroad to receive health care. Now, millions of people from different countries of the world come to Türkiye to receive a full-fledged health service. In 2025, 2 million 600 thousand people visited our country for health services. The posts made from time to time by our citizens living abroad, especially on social media, clearly reveal the huge difference between the health services in Türkiye and the countries that have been shown as examples to us for years. We can see the gap in every field, from those who wait for hours for an ambulance to arrive, to those who are devastated while receiving health care in emergency services, to paying astronomical fees for services that are free in our country, to the poor hospital conditions. We will make Türkiye a global center of attraction in health. I hope we will continue to serve our Istanbul, our country and our nation in every field, especially in health services, with new investments and new projects.
Providing health services to our citizens in the most qualified way has always been our priority. For this purpose, we are taking a new step and I am sharing with you the good news that we will announce the recruitment of 38 thousand non-physician personnel before the end of 2026. Our Ministry of Health will announce the recruitment calendar and details in the coming days.
We are cutting the ribbons of the new Internal Medicine Hospital and Esenyurt Hospital located in the Çapa and Esenyurt campuses of Istanbul University, saying "Ya Allah, Bismillah". We are also laying the foundations of the Orthopedics and Traumatology Hospital, Cerrahpaşa Hospital and Deniz Abdal Mosque. I hope that all of these works will be beneficial to our city, our country and our nation.
Istanbul University Çapa Campus Internal Medicine Hospital, which we opened, was built on an area of 44 thousand square meters. Our new Internal Medicine Hospital has a total of 186 beds, 39 of which are intensive care units. Our hospital has 56 outpatient clinics, 3 angiography units and a daily treatment capacity for 41 people. Our hospital offers a strong educational infrastructure with 40 faculty offices, 2 large lecture halls with a total capacity of 380 people, classrooms with a capacity of 147 people and a library with a capacity of 264 people. Polyclinic services began to be provided in our New Internal Medicine Hospital, which was designed in line with the needs of modern medical education and equipped with earthquake isolators. Other units are being put into operation gradually. Cardiology, infectious diseases and chest diseases departments will also provide services in our New Internal Medicine Hospital. Likewise, a 26-bed coronary intensive care unit and a 13-bed internal medicine intensive care unit will also become operational. Our Esenyurt Hospital has 200 patient beds and a total of 50 intensive care beds, including neonatal intensive care units. In addition, robotic surgery applications and complex surgeries will be performed in 12 high-standard operating rooms of our hospital. It will strengthen the strength of our faculty and hopefully provide healing to patients.
While the darkest scenes of the Middle Ages were going on in Europe in the field of medicine, we have stood out in this field since the 13th century with bimarhanes, healing houses and many other institutions all over Anatolia. Istanbul Faculty of Medicine is also entrusted to us by our ancestors.
WE REVERSED THE TABLE IN HEALTH IN 24 YEARS
We did not come to this point in health easily. We had periods when people who did not have money could not receive health care, the social security system did not work, and prescribed medicines were not available in pharmacies. We went through bad days when access to an ambulance was considered a luxury, as our people say, those who did not pay for a knife could not undergo surgery, and patients and corpses were taken hostage in the hospital. Fortunately, with the investments we have made in 24 years, the projects we have implemented, the regulations we have put into effect, and the other steps we have taken, we have managed to reverse this situation in health.
