Foreign nationals who want to work in Türkiye must obtain either a work permit or a work permit exemption certificate. Work permits for foreigners are being issued by the General Directorate of International Labour Force of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.
In order to be granted a work permit, the employee and the workplace where he/she will work must meet certain criteria. If these criteria are not met, the work permit application is subjected to be rejected.
However, obtaining a work permit is specifically facilitated in some sectors that are of strategic importance for Türkiye. One of these sectors is the tourism sector, which is referred to as the “smokeless industry” for Türkiye.
In order to increase Türkiye’s tourism potential and strengthen its service delivery capacity, various facilities are provided for foreigners to obtain work permits to work in various sectors.
In order to support the tourism sector, in addition to the facilities provided for the sector in previous years, an additional facilitation has been introduced regarding work permits for foreign employment requests of intermediary institutions operating in the field of “HEALTH TOURISM”, as to be valid between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024.
Accordingly, work permit applications for up to two foreigners from travel agencies certified by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and for intermediary organizations operating in the field of health tourism and authorized by the Ministry of Health can be evaluated without applying “employment criteria” for domestic work permit applications.
Thus, intermediary organizations operating in the field of “health tourism” within the scope of above will not be required to employ five or ten Turkish citizens for each foreigner to be employed in their foreign work permit requests.
