Trade Between Turkey and Northern Cyprus: Record Turnover and Record Imbalance

Data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) for 2025 once again showed a serious imbalance in trade relations between Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Despite growth in total trade turnover, the TRNC economy remains almost entirely dependent on imports.

According to data compiled by journalist Artun Çağa for the newspaper Gıynık, in 2025 the TRNC exported goods worth only 116.3 million dollars to Turkey, while imports from Turkey amounted to 2.63 billion dollars. Thus, total trade volume reached 2.75 billion dollars, the highest level in history.

However, growth in volumes does not imply equal relations: Turkey acts as the main supplier, while Northern Cyprus is predominantly a consumer.

Statistics illustrate the scale of the problem: in 2025, for every 1 dollar earned by the TRNC from exports to Turkey, there were 26 dollars of imports. This underscores the country’s extremely limited production and export capacity even in relation to its main trading partner.

As a result, the TRNC’s trade deficit in 2025 reached 2.515 billion dollars, equivalent to approximately 108 billion Turkish lira at the year-end exchange rate.

Experts note that the Northern Cyprus economy is moving further away from a production-export model and increasingly consolidating into an import-dependent system. Such a structure is considered vulnerable and unsustainable in the long term, as import growth without the development of domestic production inevitably increases economic risks.

The problem is systemic. According to TÜİK data for the period 2016–2025, total TRNC exports to Turkey amounted to about 981 million dollars, while imports exceeded 16.47 billion dollars. The cumulative trade deficit over ten years reached 15.5 billion dollars.

Even though exports in 2025 were among the highest of the past decade, they failed to change the overall picture. The data clearly show that trade relations between the TRNC and Turkey remain deeply unbalanced, and dependence on imports continues to grow.