Phoniatrics in Turkey

Phoniatrics is not a formal discrete specialization or a sub-specialization in Türkiye. The people with communicative disorders are usually diagnosed, treated and followed up by otolaryngologists. There are nearly 3200 otolaryngologists throughout the country that has 70 million inhabitants. As predicted, the specialization training program for otolaryngology covers only some fields of phoniatrics but, several academic centers in big cities like Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir, Bursa, Konya and Kahramanmaraş have highly educated otolaryngologists dedicated to communicative disorders. There are also nearly 190 audiologist-language pathologists and 80 speech-language pathologists that work hard in the fields of hearing, speech and language pathologies. The numbers and the quality of training are increasing in all of these three interrelated fields.

Ass. Professor Haldun OGUZ, General Secretary Professional Voice Society, Ankara, Turkey