Özet:

Abstract In the recent years medical tourism has become a rapidly growing tourism sector with the travels of patients for medical treatment. It is wellknown that cities such as Diyarbakır, Şanlıurfa, Mardin provinces in the Southeastern Anatolia Region offer a great potential for the tourism sector offering both cultural and religious sightseeings. In order to diversify tourism services, establishing a "medical free zone" in the region will give rise to people from all around the world especially from contiguous countries, who want to have medical care and also satisfy a tourism travel need, to prefer this region. In this article, history of health tourism and health tourism, a branch of a business discovered by capitalism, are processed as a rapidly growing commercial potential. In Turkey, importance of economic potential of medical tourism and its demonstrations are approached with comparing its development worldwide. By advancing with a successful way and by taking precautions, medical tourism is believed to be a subject for a well-developed region, and also this kind of tourism movement will bring about a decrease to unfair regional development distinctness and will contribute to create new job opportunities for its population. Keywords: Health tourism, treatment, travel, economic development

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