Turkey to allocate €486m in funds for northern Cyprus

The Turkish government is to provide 25 billion TL (€486m) worth of funds to northern Cyprus as part of the latest annual financial protocol it is to sign with the Turkish Cypriot authorities, the north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel said on Friday.

“I will be going to Turkey next week. The new 2026 financial protocol will be signed on April 8. We sill sign an agreement worth approximately 25bn TL for my people, put it into effect immediately, and use it where necessary,” he said during an appearance on television channel TV2020.

Financial protocols signed between Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot authorities typically contain plans for how the money will be allocated, and targets set for the Turkish Cypriot authorities by Turkey in various fields for the period to follow.

The most recent financial protocol, signed in in March last year, which was worth 21bn TL – €510.5m at the time. The financial protocol of 2024 was signed in June that year, and was worth 16bn TL, the equivalent of €452m at the time.

Ustel is expected to travel to Ankara next Wednesday, having spent the second half of this week in Azerbaijan, where he participated in a summit of the Organisation of Turkic States.

There, he held a meeting with Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz, who is expected to sign next week’s protocol on behalf of the Republic of Turkey, while also making a speech to a roundtable of participants, who included Yilmaz, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and representatives of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

During his intervention, he said that “the TRNC is the unshakeable stronghold of the Organisation of Turkic States in the eastern Mediterranean”, and that in the prevailing geopolitical environment, “strategic solidarity among Turkic states has become a historical necessity”.

On the Cyprus problem, he said “the TRNC has been subject to unjust isolation for years”, but that “despite this, it continues to stand strong with the support of its people”.

He then added that “the only realistic solution to the Cyprus problem is a two-state solution based on the recognition of sovereign equality and equal international status”, though this is not the official position of the Turkish Cypriot community, whose elected leader Tufan Erhurman favours a federal solution to the Cyprus problem.

Yilmaz also spoke about Cyprus during the summit, expressing “gratitude” to Aliyev and Azerbaijani Prime Minister Ali Asadov for inviting Ustel to the summit.

“The island of Cyprus, with its strategic location, has become even more important today in light of recent developments in the region. Therefore, we must consider the TRNC as an element representing the common presence and the shared interests of the Turkic world in the region,” he said.