Orthodontics in Türkiye: Braces and Clear Aligners

Why alignment is not only cosmetic

Crowded teeth trap plaque in places a brush cannot reach, which drives decay and gum disease over decades. Teeth that meet unevenly concentrate force on a few contacts, producing wear facets, cracked cusps and sometimes jaw joint symptoms. An open bite makes it hard to incise food; a deep bite can traumatise the gum behind the upper front teeth. Correcting position corrects the loading, and that is the durable benefit that outlasts the aesthetic one.

Fixed appliances

Fixed braces remain the most versatile and most predictable tool in orthodontics. They can achieve movements — significant rotations, bodily movement of roots, closure of extraction spaces, correction of skeletal discrepancies with elastics — that aligners manage poorly or not at all. Ceramic brackets are considerably less visible than metal, and lingual appliances bonded to the inner surfaces are invisible from outside, at higher cost and with a longer adaptation period for speech.

Clear aligners

Aligners are a sequence of transparent trays, each moving the teeth a fraction of a millimetre. They are removable, so cleaning is easier and there are no dietary restrictions. They are near-invisible. They suit mild to moderate crowding, spacing, relapse after previous treatment, and cases with an intact bite well.

Their limitations are real, and worth stating: they depend entirely on being worn 20 to 22 hours a day, they struggle with large rotations and root movement, and complex skeletal cases are outside their scope. Where a case sits at the edge of what aligners can do, we say so rather than start a treatment that will need rescuing with fixed appliances halfway through.

Orthodontics for international patients

Multi-month treatment and international travel appear incompatible, but two things make them workable. First, aligner treatment can be planned entirely from records taken in a short initial visit; the full series is manufactured and given to you, with progress reviewed remotely by photograph at each stage change. Second, for fixed appliances we coordinate with a dentist near you for routine adjustments while retaining the plan and the key appointments here.

We are candid about which approach suits which case. A patient who can visit Ankara only twice is not a good candidate for complex fixed-appliance treatment, and we would rather say that at the enquiry stage.

Planning

Treatment begins with photographs, an intraoral scan, a panoramic radiograph and a lateral cephalogram — a standardised side-view X-ray that shows the skeletal relationship between the jaws. That last record separates a dental problem, correctable by moving teeth, from a skeletal one, which may need surgical assistance or acceptance of a compromise. Planning without it is guessing.

Retention is not optional

Teeth move throughout life, and they move most in the first year after treatment. Every case finishes with retention: a thin wire bonded behind the front teeth, a removable retainer worn nightly, or both. Patients who stop wearing retainers see relapse, sometimes substantially, and the remedy is a second course of treatment. Retention is part of the treatment, not an accessory to it, and we include the retainers in the quoted price.