The impact of the EU Financial Aid on the Turkish Cypriot Community: an analysis of civil society organisations

Following the accession of Cyprus to the EU in 2004, despite the failure of the UN’s settlement plan to reunify the island, Financial Aid for the Turkish Cypriot Community (TCc) aimed to incorporate non-state actors in the TCc to facilitate the reunification process. Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) were among the actors that EU has collaborated with to help the TCc to comply with the EU principles and policies. Such collaboration meant that not only did the EU diffuse its policies over the community, but it also attempted to ease a possible process of reunification of the island by decreasing the “gap” between the two communities. The EU started providing technical and financial support to the Turkish Cypriot CSOs in line with its own bureaucratic procedures as it does in other candidate countries; yet unlike those countries, the ongoing conflict in Cyprus have served both as a catalyst and setback in the process, presenting a unique set of circumstances for the EU. This article aims to analyse the impact of the financial aid provided; focusing on the CSOs that were beneficiaries between 2007-2022.Based on twenty-three interviews with beneficiary CSOs representatives, we show that while the EU has been partly successful in strengthening civil society in North Cyprus, two significant drawbacks hindered their success; rigidity of the EU bureaucracy, and low capacity of the CSOs.