Tens of millions of tourists visit Turkey each year, most of whom are there to see the convergence of East and West. It’s a place where Europe meets Asia, where history collides with modernism, where you can find a dazzling combination of culture and cool unlike anywhere else on planet Earth. But among those millions of people, there are thousands of men looking for one thing in particular: hair.

Well, kind of — to be clear, the men coming to Turkey already have the hair they’re looking for. It’s just that it’s mostly on the back of their heads, and recessed or thinning in places where they wish it was full and lustrous. It’s almost wicked, that a few inches of scalp separate growth and loss; that we spend infinitely more time facing the part of people’s heads where hair dwindles than the nape of their neck, where it grows seemingly non-stop. It’s a bit unfair that many will travel hundreds if not thousands of miles to find a doctor to move these follicles mere inches.

Thanks to technology, affordability, and nimble marketing, Turkey has become shorthand for hair restoration. Whenever a male celebrity pops up on the red carpet looking rejuvenated and dashing, an increasingly common response is he went to Turkey. While both experts and medical tourists say this charge is probably not true — celebrities likely have enough money to get restoration work done wherever they please — the stereotype remains: Turkey is where men go to get their hairlines back.

Hair transplants have gotten so good that you can’t even tell

The key to understanding the subject of hair and its restoration is knowing how awful things used to be. Back in the day, transplants were better known as “plugs” (derogatory). “Plug” is a phonetically ugly word that connotes the idea of a cavity — a hole or gap that needs to be filled. Plugs don’t necessarily solve a problem, as much as they fill one.

“We don’t use that term anymore,” Dr. Jason Champagne, an LA-based celebrity facial plastic surgeon who specializes in hair restoration, tells Vox. Champagne explains that 40 or 50 years ago, in the early days of hair restoration, surgeons would try to move large groupings of hair from one part of a person’s head to another. “It was almost like a punch of scalp that would be moved. They would sort of just line it up in rows, too. And the effect, that’s what we would call ‘doll hair.’”

“Doll hair” looks obvious, and grows in a pattern that’s unnatural compared to the way hair grows on our heads, Champagne says. There’s a sense of disgust when I prod Champagne about this type of restoration; I can hear his displeasure when he goes on about the “little tufts of hair” growing in aesthetically unpleasant formations where they shouldn’t be.

Since those early days of plugs and doll hair, hair restoration has become more advanced. The two main procedures today are known as Follicular Unit Transplantation (FUT) and Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE). The former is a process in which an incision is made — usually on the back of one’s head, near the neck— and a strip of hair is sliced away. The follicles on that sliver of skin are harvested one by one and then placed where a patient needs growth. In an FUE procedure, the individual follicles are more or less “punched out,” Champagne explains. Instead of a linear incision and stitches, FUE results in more scars that are smaller and less distinct.

The beauty of both these procedures is that they allow surgeons to harvest and individually place the transplanted hair follicles with more precision than in the past, avoiding the appearance of “plugs” or “doll hair.” They’ve even learned to account for the problem that not all follicles are the same. As Champagne tells me, follicles along our hairlines usually grow single hairs while those on the top of our heads around the crown can grow two to four hairs. Because of how good science has gotten at extraction and magnification, surgeons can transplant specific follicles to specific places on the scalp, allowing hair to look and lie naturally: follicles sprouting single hairs along the hairline, and follicles with more growths toward the back of the head.

The aesthetic advancements in hair restoration are a huge reason why these procedures have gotten so popular. The results look better and more natural, and the procedures themselves have become less invasive as the years go by. Since the results are so good and procedures now have easier recoveries, more and more people are inclined to take the leap.

How Turkey became the world capital of hair transplants

Trying to figure out why Turkey has become such a force in hair transplants is a bit like trying to untangle a chicken or the egg scenario, or in this case: What came first, Turkey or the transplant? The men who had procedures done there told me that they, at some point, were told that Turkey was the very best.

Experts I talked to explained there isn’t just one reason Turkey has become an epicenter for hair transplants. Rather, it’s the perfect storm of several different factors: a good local healthcare system, skilled doctors, competition among providers, and an easy-to-access location that’s also desirable to visit. And while a full head of hair has traditionally been seen as a symbol of masculinity and virility for men across the world, Turkey’s cosmetic surgeons might understand that better than anyone.

Dr. David Vequist, founder of the Center for Medical Tourism Research at the University of the Incarnate Word, explains that hair restoration procedures have been highly prized in Turkey since the 1980s, and that interest has grown with the technology.

The first FUE hair transplants began in Turkey around 2002, though the method was first developed in Japan, he explains. He notes that 20 or so years later, there are now at least 500 hair transplant clinics in Istanbul alone. Compared to the US, the rate of hair loss clinics per capita is astonishing, Vequist says: “Turkey has about eight times the stand-alone clinics devoted to hair transplants [compared to] the US.”

He adds: “Several clinics are sometimes competing for the same patients. But this makes sure they have very good pricing, have to concentrate on their quality, and try to offer other value-added services. This supercharges the value and reputation of the region for the potential patients coming from abroad.”

Turkey’s luxe hair transplant services are just the latest and poshest iteration of medical tourism. It’s not unlike the way people have flocked to Brazil for breast implants and butt lifts, or how South Korea cornered the market on eyelid surgeries and rhinoplasty.

“It’s a bit of one hand washing the other,” says Josef Woodman, the CEO of Patients Beyond Borders, a medical tourism guide. Woodman explains that Turkey’s health infrastructure is very good. This is similar in other countries known as health care destinations — Hungary, Czech Republic, Thailand, and South Korea are some he mentions. He notes that patients seeking orthopedics, ophthalmology, and even oncology care are going overseas and are astonished by the pricing and procedures they can afford.

“Great hospitals, great clinics, great specialties, and great doctors — they’re in almost every industrialized country,” he explains. “As these countries have grown, their rate of growth has driven improvements in their health care systems and their education systems. That’s driving medical tourism, because a lot of these clinics began to cater to American patients.”

He draws a comparison between hair restoration in Turkey and Americans flocking to Mexico for high-quality dentistry. The procedures begin regionally, and then attract overseas patients for their affordability — hair transplants in Turkey are a fraction of the cost in the US.

“The real question may be, why aren’t people having the procedure done in the US?” asks Adam Hurly, a men’s grooming expert and founder of Blue Print, a platform geared toward men’s beauty and fitness. Hurly went to Turkey for a hair transplant procedure in 2020, and, after seeing Hurly’s results, his partner followed with a procedure in 2023. For them, a big factor was cost.

Hurly explains that procedures in Turkey are usually around $3,000 to $4,000. In the US, experts told me that the prices for hair transplant procedures tend to be higher. Hurly says that in affluent regions like Beverly Hills or Manhattan, you could see these procedures go five figures. The high price in the US has patients looking elsewhere.

“Usually the cost of the hair transplant won’t include flight, but if you add the flight into what you’re paying total, and you’re probably getting it all under $5,000,” Hurly says of the medical tourist route.

According to USHAŞ, a Turkish state-owned healthcare company that promotes medical tourism within the country, over 1.1 million people visited Turkey for “health care services” in the third quarter of 2024. The year before, the country’s medical tourism value was at $1.9 billion according to Research and Markets, an industry analysis firm. In that report, hair restoration was the dominant factor.

“There are hair transplants in destinations like Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Costa Rica, but there’s no place like Turkey,” Woodman, the medical tourism expert, says.

What’s kept Turkey at the top of the hair restoration hierarchy isn’t just that so many doctors there focus on hair transplants, but because they’ve learned how to market the procedure alluringly.

Getting a hair transplant in Turkey looks like a luxury vacation

The few thousand dollars for hair restoration in Turkey usually pays for the procedure, but some of the most popular clinics provide an experience that feels more like a trip to a luxury resort. Hair restoration clinics book patients for a couple of nights at a high-end, usually all-inclusive hotel, and provide transportation back and forth to the airport and clinic. Plenty of influencers on TikTok and Instagram have documented their Turkish delights, and the trips look more akin to fancy bachelor parties — limousines, lavish suites, gorgeous meals — than medical recovery.

There’s even some fun and joy in the ickier parts, as well. At one point during Hurly’s trip, he looked around during brunch at the hotel restaurant and saw other men sporting the same recovery bandages and bleeding scalps he wore.

“It’s equal parts really sad, communal, and friendly, because everyone is in some state of about to have a surgery or recovering from surgery, and laying low,” Hurly says.

Chris Mizzoni, an artist, had a similar experience. He heard about Turkey in late 2021 when he began researching hair restoration. His social media algorithms kept pointing him to the country and its doctors, and eventually he made the jump and had a hair restoration procedure done in June 2024. Mizzoni has been documenting his hair journey on TikTok, and some of his videos have over 2 million views.

The popularity of Mizzoni’s videos and other influencers’ videos about their hair transplant experiences point to how common hair loss is. According to doctors, more than 80 percent of men and nearly half of women “experience significant hair loss” during their time on Earth. It makes sense that so many people would be curious about an affordable solution.

“When you buy your hair transplant, it’s not like you have to plan anything,” Mizzoni tells me, explaining that the most stressful part of the trip was finding his driver at the airport. The rest was door-to-door service: All he had to do was be in the hotel lobby at a certain time.

It’s a winning proposition. “The projected market in the next 10 years is supposed to double or triple,” Champagne, the plastic surgeon, tells me, explaining that though hair transplants are predominantly marketed toward men, women can benefit from the process too. Champagne himself is specializing in using the advancements in hair transplant tech to give patients fuller eyebrows. He also works on mustaches and facial hair.

“I see a lot of celebrity clients — a lot of people that are on camera and want to look like nothing was ever done,” Champagne says. “You have to be somewhat of an artist if you’re going to get the best, most natural-looking results.”

The reality of hair transplants: scabs, facial swelling, and sleeping upright

“Imagine two softballs coming down the side of your head, all the way into your cheeks,” Gary Frayter, a social media manager tells me. Frayter is describing what he thinks was the worst part of his eight-hour procedure.

Six to eight hours is about the time needed to finish a hair transplant. Like Frayter, most people going to Turkey for a treatment are getting FUE, which has a shorter recovery period — patients are usually awake but slightly sedated during the extraction process, and numbing injections (which I’m told are the most painful part) are used on the scalp.

Frayter spent eight months researching which doctor to go to; other men and experts I spoke to echoed this approach. While the payoff can be both economic and aesthetic, you are putting yourself in the hands of a doctor in another country. If any part of surgery goes awry, getting it fixed can be a difficult task, involving travel, translation, and further expense.

Frayter says he was in Turkey for about four days, noting that his procedure was on a Thursday and was sent to the airport on Friday after getting his wound cleaned and getting checked out by his doctor.

“The swelling, that was the most annoying part. But that’s not an exclusive thing to Turkey. I mean, if you get a nose operation in Beverly Hills — when I lived in LA, I would see 17-year-old girls recovering from rhinoplasty — you’re gonna have swelling,” Frayter says, assuring me that it was a small price to pay for a fuller head of hair.

For Mizzoni, the most difficult part of the procedure was learning to sleep upright. To avoid disrupting any transplant areas — and because of the aforementioned swelling — doctors advise sleeping upright for around one week after surgery.

“It basically means you’re not gonna sleep,” Mizzoni tells me, saying that he used a pillow behind his back to sleep at 90 degrees. “It was bad those first couple of days.”

Then after those first few days come the scabs. Tiny, beady bumps form on the transplant areas. Patients are told to apply lotion to the affected areas, and just let the scabs form. Being gentle with the scabs is part of the healing process; doctors don’t want patients to disturb any of the precious follicles that they’ve harvested and transplanted.

“After, like, a week or so, you can start sleeping horizontally again, you wake up, and your pillow is just like covered in little scabs,” Hurly tells me, adding that doctors stress precautions like sun protection and not engaging in strenuous sweaty activities for the first couple of weeks.

Despite the swelling, the sleeping upright, and heads full of scabs, Frayter, Mizzoni, and Hurly all firmly say that these are just minor inconveniences when you compare them to the big picture: a full head of hair you can run your hands through, heartthrob style.

Patients get a preview of this around two weeks after the process. At that point, all the scabs are gone and they get to see the transplanted hairs. It’s a bit of a mirage though. Most of those hairs fall out shortly after because of shock — the stress of being relocated, sadly, upsets the existing hairs.

New growth won’t start coming in for the next four to six months, and doctors say that the real, appearance-altering results start coming in one year after.

Hurly, who is around four years removed from his surgery, hopes that the advancements in tech get better and better and that hair transplants become a viable option for more and more people with thinning hair and insecurities surrounding it. Hurly still has to keep up with the topical medicines, and wears an LED cap around the house — again, he says, minor prices to pay for his new hair.

He also tells me that having gone through the process has made him better at spotting people, including many celebrities who have undergone the same treatment, if not necessarily in the same place. The giveaway is a hairline that looks too perfect, too good to be true. Ostensibly, that means that the celebrities who are pulling it off the best are the ones who aren’t going for anything drastic.

“A lot of my barbers actually are surprised when I tell them I’ve had a transplant,” Hurly, who lives in Europe, says — adding that it might be only a matter of time before hair stylists catch on. “But Turkish barbers are really good. They always know the second I sit down.”