If you have this treatment,’ Dr Can Kucukcay began, ‘in six months time, your gums will start to smell.

‘It’ll get so bad that your girlfriend won’t sleep in the same room as you. You’ll be in severe pain. And in ten years, 100 per cent, you will lose your teeth.’

A week ago I inquired online from London into the possibility of a whiter smile at a Turkish dental clinic in Istanbul. Within 30 minutes a sales rep was demanding pictures of my teeth via WhatsApp and urging me to ‘hurry before prices rise’.

Apparently, from the blurry images I had sent, I was an ideal candidate to be given a Hollywood Smile. Known better here as Turkey Teeth, this now notorious procedure involves shaving down or wholly removing a patient’s teeth and replacing them with sparkling white crowns or implants.

To investigate further, I decided to fly to Turkey the following week to put myself forward for the treatment. If it went ahead, I would have my perfectly healthy teeth irreversibly cut down and 24 zirconia crowns cemented over the top. There would be no X-ray and no need for a medical history.

Incredibly, the purely cosmetic treatment – which costs up to £30,000 in the UK – would set me back just under £4,000, including return flights and four nights in a five-star hotel overlooking the Bosphorus.

The day before I was due to go under the knife, I sought the advice of Dr Can, one of the most respected dentists in Istanbul and who, in 1997, opened the country’s first ever health tourism clinic, Ata Pera Dental. His warning was sobering. Not that I was under any illusions as to how the Turkish dental dream can all too easily turn to rot.

This month the case of Pawel Bukowski, from Watton, Norfolk, made headlines after it emerged he had taken his own life last April following negligent dental surgery in Istanbul that left him without any teeth at all.

After removing them surgeons told forklift driver Pawel, 48, a father of three, it would be six months before he could receive his new smile.

He was under the impression he would have temporary dentures fitted before returning for permanent implants. However, ‘the clinic told him they could not proceed further,’ according to his wife Daria. While it is unclear why the clinic refused to fit temporary dentures, this sort of decision is typically taken due to severe gum damage during surgery.

‘He was deeply broken emotionally. Losing his teeth had destroyed his self-confidence and sense of hope,’ Daria – who has now been widowed twice – later revealed.

But Pawel’s is far from an isolated case. Over the past five years, Turkey’s reputation for cheap dentistry has been tarnished by countless grim tales of rushed, botched and mis-sold treatments. Indeed, the problem has become so bad that Dr Can now believes some clinics are operating more like ‘butchers’ than dentists.

As I discovered in Istanbul this week, Britons are taking huge risks at ‘under-the-counter’ Turkish clinics, to which they’re lured by low prices and aggressive marketing techniques that even extend to touting for business on UK soil – a practice the British Dental Association says is ‘illegal’.

According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, just over half a million British citizens – many furious at endless NHS waiting lists – travelled abroad for medical treatment in 2024. As many as 196,000 chose Turkey, with an estimated 50 per cent of them having dental work. That means around 100,000 Britons are attending dental clinics in Turkey every year, a figure that is rising according to those on the ground here.

No one should be surprised: A Government report earlier this year found NHS dental waiting lists to be so long that ‘some patients are performing DIY dentistry, pulling out loose teeth themselves due to lack of access’.

Meanwhile, private dentistry in the UK is prohibitively expensive for most, with the competition watchdog investigating a huge 25 per cent hike in fees for consultations between 2022 and 2024.

But while many do seek routine treatment abroad, such as fillings and root canal work, cosmetic dentistry remains by far the most popular – and most controversial.

‘The Hollywood Smile is our biggest headache,’ Dr Can explained, walking me through his clinic. ‘Young people, certainly under 40, mustn’t have their teeth “cut”. When you’re young, the nerves in your gums are near the surface and so they’re sensitive. Some clinics don’t tell people this because they just want money. If you have healthy teeth but just want them whiter, you mustn’t cut them. You can just have a bleach if you want.’

Both crowns and implants involve complicated multi-day surgery done either under local or general anaesthetic. For crowns, teeth are cut into small points and the artificial teeth glued on top. For implants, teeth are wholly removed and new ones drilled into the jawbone. The former is slightly cheaper but only lasts 10 to 15 years. The latter is more invasive but allegedly more durable.

Regardless, the result is all-too often the sort of overly large and dazzling white gnashers popularised by Simon Cowell and Turkey dental veteran Katie Price.

The Daily Mail visited more than ten clinics in Istanbul asking for whiter teeth. A clean, polish or bleach, which is all any teeth are likely to need, was suggested by just two at a total cost of under £300. Eight others recommended more expensive crowns (at around £3,000) or implants at closer to £6,000.

As Dr Can explained, this is inappropriate and dangerous advice for a young candidate like me with perfectly healthy teeth.

While I declined to press ahead with my appointment, there is no shortage of horror stories from those who have passed through a Turkish dentist. Delivery driver Joe Denton, 34, had 14 implants fitted in Turkey for £3,500, a 90 per cent discount on his UK quote.

Following the procedure, Joe flew home in ‘excruciating’ pain. Four days later, his entire bottom set of implants popped out when he was laughing. In March this year, he flew back to Turkey to have the issue fixed.

Only, having been sedated, Joe woke up to find the remainder of his implants had also been removed leaving him completely toothless. ‘I was in a better position before going to Turkey than I am now,’ he admitted. ‘It’s the worst thing I’ve ever been through. I wish I could turn back time.’

According to the British Dental Association, a shocking 86 per cent of UK dentists report having treated patients whose issue stemmed from faulty or failed treatment abroad. Of those dentists, 76 per cent said their patients were in pain following their overseas treatment. ‘Several dentists reported concerns about over-prepared teeth – where more of a tooth is removed than necessary,’ the association added.

This was corroborated by Dr Jonathan Hewitt of the Smmmile Surgery in Leeds. ‘I’ve seen multiple patients who’ve come in requiring corrective surgery having had extensive work done in Turkey,’ he explained. ‘I had one patient who thought she was getting veneers [small white shells that fit over existing teeth] only to discover afterwards she’d had her teeth shaved all the way down and crowns placed on top.’

Even worse, Dr Hewitt continued, the crowns were so cheap they were attached to one another making the patient look as if she was wearing a mouthguard. ‘They were completely impossible to clean. It was impossible to look after the gums and it was just going to lead to more and more problems,’ he said.

As Dr Hewitt pointed out, the irony is that these patients end up spending far more on corrective surgery in the UK than they saved from hopping on a flight to Turkey in the first instance.

So why do things go so badly wrong in Turkey? After all, like British dentists, their Turkish counterparts train for five years, clinics are fully licensed and all establishments investigated by the Daily Mail were registered with the authorities.

The first problem appears to be the haste with which cheap clinics rush. ‘They’re more like barber shops,’ Dr Can explained. ‘The best dentists are slow and good.’

He also suspects that some clinics do not leave time for gums and teeth to heal appropriately before completing treatment.

And then there are the actual materials used. ‘We use Swiss or US-made zirconium,’ Dr Can continues, referring to the corrosion-resistant, opaque metal typically used to make crowns. ‘But there’s Turkish zirconium and Chinese too, which is maybe half the price. Let’s just say, they’re not like the European stuff.’

Sadly, not all patients can be sure of exactly what they’re getting. ‘Don’t just ask for a certificate of your treatment,’ Dr Can said, ‘please ask for the box the implants or crowns came in too. Only that way can you be sure of their provenance and the quality of the brand.’

Promising one thing and providing another – known as ‘bait and switch’ selling – is a major problem in Turkish dentistry. So too is ‘upselling’ in which a customer arrives only to be told they need further work at greater cost.

In one particularly shocking case, mother of three Vicky Robinson, from Nottingham, was sedated for a £3,000 dental procedure at a Turkish clinic only to awake to a £10,000 bill after the dentist unilaterally decided to undertake additional surgery.

Perhaps most troubling of all is that it is increasingly difficult for British customers to establish which clinics are working to what standards. For a start, online reviews can no longer be trusted.

‘Dental tourism has grown into a multi-billion-pound global industry and with that growth has come an increasingly competitive landscape for clinics vying for international patients,’ explains tourism agency Dent Health Istanbul. ‘Reviews are the currency of trust in this market and unfortunately, some clinics have found ways to manipulate that currency.’

The agency warns that many online reviews are fictitious, while some clinics now offer ‘special offers, free treatments or gifts in exchange for positive feedback’.

At the same time, clinics are allegedly posting reviews attacking rival establishments to ‘damage competitors rather than share genuine experiences’.

One UK Facebook group, which reviews Turkish dental surgeries, has been ‘aggressively targeted’ by a clinic according to the group’s administrator Linda Williams. While the positive reviews were left untouched, the clinic flagged and targeted ten posts for ‘copyright, trademark and counterfeit violations’, in a litigious move Linda regards as ‘censorship’.

Even more alarmingly, clinics have now begun operating marketing schemes on UK soil.

For example, Papatya Dental – a practice based in the Turkish seaside resort of Antalya – held a two-day in-person event at a Manchester hotel in January to ‘answer your questions and offer one-on-one consultations’.

Similarly, Apex Dental Turkey is set to embark on a promotional UK tour this summer, from Rochester to Brighton.

While the Daily Mail is not accusing either surgery of wrongdoing, BDA Chair Eddie Crouch has his reservations.

‘Dentistry in Britain is tightly regulated but the authorities here seem utterly untroubled that these [Turkish] clinics are now touting for business in UK hotels.’

Because Turkish dentists are not necessarily qualified to work in the UK, offering a ‘consultation’ on UK soil could well prove illegal. ‘Providers are using semantics to mask illegal activity,’ Crouch continued, ‘with regulators seemingly unwilling to tackle crimes taking place in plain sight.’

The truth remains, however, that Britons need little encouragement to fly four hours to Turkey for treatment they can neither afford nor access at home. ‘British citizens are the number one market for most Turkish clinics,’ medical tourism adviser İlker Petek explained to me in Istanbul this week. ‘Treatment in the UK is at least three to four times higher [in cost] than in Turkey and customers can combine it with tourism.’

While Petek has noted a slight downturn in business due to the conflict in the Middle East, he expects trade to pick up again.

Indeed, despite the latest tranche of horror stories of botched treatment – Pawel Bukowski’s tragic suicide included – nothing it seems will deter Britons from chasing a bargain, no matter the real cost.