Turkey's Thriving Business in Hair, Beard, and Mustache Implants

Sitting in the spotless white headquarters of the Istanbul Hair Center, Akeelesh says he feels no pain at all. And despite the raw skin with dots of blood at the follicles across his frontal scalp, the visitor from England is beaming.

Akeelesh, who declined to give his last name for privacy, lost much of his hair to an infection when he was a teenager, and he thought his receding hairline just wasn’t natural. It bothered the 23-year-old pharmacology graduate and took a toll on his social life. One of his neighbors had come to Turkey for hair implants, and Akleelesh watched with interest as the older man’s procedure took root. Over the course of a few months, the middle-aged man was transformed. “He was old, but he looked young,” Akeelesh remembers, “He was getting confidence.”