What an ST number is, and what it proves

An ST number is the identifier Türkiye's Ministry of Health gives a health facility that holds an International Health Tourism Authorisation. It is written in the format ST-0000. If a clinic has sent you a certificate with a number like that on it, the number is the part worth checking, because it is the only part that can be matched exactly against the register.

What the format tells you

The format is fixed: the letters ST, a hyphen, then four digits. That shape is useful on its own. A number that does not look like ST-0000 is not an ST number, whatever else it may be.

Of the 4,403 facilities that hold the authorisation in total, 3,905 carry a number in that ST format. The rest do not, and that is where the awkward cases begin.

Where the number appears

You will usually meet the number in one of two places: on the certificate document itself, or in the register entry for the facility. These are separate sources, and they do not always say the same thing.

healthturkey.co reads the number from the register and also reads it from the certificate PDF by optical character recognition. On 962 certificates, both readings agree. Where they agree, you have two independent readings of the same string, which is a stronger position than trusting a screenshot.

OCR also recovered 1,032 licence and document numbers that appear only inside the scanned PDF and nowhere in the register data. Those numbers exist on paper and not in the structured record. If a clinic quotes a number you cannot find in the register, that is one possible explanation — not proof of anything, but a reason to look at the document itself.

Why an exact key beats a name search

A clinic name is a string of text that humans retype. It can be misspelled, translated, abbreviated, or written with a different company name than the one on the licence. Searching by name returns near-misses, and a near-miss looks like a hit.

An ST number is an exact key. Unlike a clinic name, it cannot be misspelled into a different result. Either the string matches an entry or it does not. You can search by licence number and see what the register holds for that key.

This matters most when a certificate image is your only evidence. An image can be cropped, recoloured, or edited. The number inside it can be typed into a search box in seconds.

How to test a number you have been sent

• Read the number off the certificate yourself. Do not accept a number typed into a message.
• Check the shape: ST, hyphen, four digits.
• Search the register for that exact string.
• Compare the facility name, address and authorisation status on the register entry with the certificate in front of you.
• If the site publishes the document, compare the file. Each document is published with its SHA-256 hash so the file can be compared byte for byte.

Our guide on how to verify a licence walks through the same steps in more detail.

The awkward cases

Not every authorised facility has an ST number in the register. Two groups are worth knowing about.

What the register holds	How many facilities
A number in the ST-0000 format	3,905
A longer document reference instead of an ST number	374
No licence number recorded at all	124
Total holding the authorisation	4,403

If a clinic falls into the second or third group, the absence of an ST number does not mean the authorisation is absent. It means the register records the authorisation differently. Ask for the certificate and read whatever reference is on it.

The reverse also holds. A facility that does not appear in a search is not thereby unlicensed. Absence can mean a different registered name, a spelling difference, or a number recorded in another format. Treat a failed search as a question to resolve, not a verdict.

What the number does not prove

The register shows a licence. It does not grade care.

An ST number confirms that a facility holds an International Health Tourism Authorisation and that the identifier matches a register entry. It says nothing about the quality of treatment, the outcome you will get, or whether a particular procedure is right for you. healthturkey.co takes no fee from any clinic, books nothing, and makes no claim about quality of care. Its whole value is that it shows the licence and publishes the document behind it.

One more thing to keep straight: the signature on the credentials published on this site belongs to healthturkey.co, not to the Ministry. The signature attests to what we published and when, not to the licence itself. The licence is the Ministry's; the publication is ours.

If you want to see how the numbering falls across the register, you can browse the register and read the entries as they stand.