Background/aim: An opinion survey was conducted to investigate the opinions and attitudes of the Turkish population regardingcancer if they or one of their family members were to receive a diagnosis of cancer.Materials and methods: Te opinion survey was completed by 6566 subjects and consisted of questions about the demographics of theparticipants and their overall opinions about cancer. Te other points of the investigation asked whether they would inform relativeswho had cancer about the diagnosis and whether they would prefer to be informed if they were the one with the cancer diagnosis.Results: Te median age of the participants was 33 years (range: 18 100) and 53.3% were male. It was found that 57.7% of the participantswould prefer not to disclose a cancer diagnosis to their frst-degree relatives. Te diagnosis had been disclosed to relatives with cancerin 69.9% of cases. When asked about their overall opinion of cancer management, 76.5% of participants were optimistic, 16.3% werepessimistic, and 2.9% had mixed opinions.Conclusion: Tis study represents one of the largest surveys done in Turkey to identify the thoughts of healthy people about cancerand their opinion on informing their relatives about the diagnosis if the relatives have cancer. It is comparable with reports from EastEurope and Asian countries.