Work Permits: Employer Application, Documents and Contributions

Foreign nationals working in North Cyprus fall under the Foreigners' Work Permits Law (63/2006), and the defining feature of the system is that your employer — not you — applies for the permit. This page covers the application flow, the documents involved, how long the permit lasts and what it does and does not allow, the extension rules, and the payroll deductions you should expect — including the higher social insurance rates that apply to "third-country" nationals. Students have a separate permit type with its own rules; see Working as a Student.

All the official sources are published in Turkish; the links at the bottom point to the consolidated legal texts.

The basic rule: the employer applies

Under article 5 of the Law, an employer who wants to hire a foreign worker must obtain a work permit; workers receive theirs through their employer. Since a 2025 amendment (25/2025), employers who belong to a statutory professional organisation may authorise that organisation to file and follow up applications on their behalf — without this removing the employer's own responsibility (art. 5A).

Two distinctions worth knowing before you sign anything:

• Business-establishment permit: foreign board members and shareholders of foreign-partnered companies who want to reside in North Cyprus and operate as employers need a separate business-establishment permit (İş Kurma İzni, art. 5(3), 11-12), not a work permit. That is a different track, outside this page's scope.
• Permanent residence exemption: holders of a valid permanent residence permit, and the employers who hire them, are deemed to have met the Law's permit obligations (art. 5(4)).

A work permit also settles your immigration status: while valid, it counts as a residence permit, so no separate residence permit is needed — see Residence Permit Types.

The application flow: pre-approval → entry → 15 days → 30 days

Per the official source, the process runs in this order:

1. Employer obtains pre-approval before you travel

   Before you arrive, the employer applies to the Ministry and obtains pre-approval (ön izin). A foreign national who enters without it cannot be employed at any workplace, and no work-permit application can be filed for them — do not travel on a promise that "the paperwork will be sorted later."

2. Enter with the pre-approval in place

   You enter North Cyprus once the pre-approval is issued. Lacking a valid entry permit is one of the statutory refusal grounds (art. 15).

3. Application within 15 days of entry

   Within 15 days of your entry at the latest, the application is filed with the Labour Office regional office (Bölge Amirliği).

4. Completion within 30 days

   The permit formalities must be completed within 30 days of entry. Filing on time is the employer's legal duty; if they fail, the employer is liable for material loss you suffer through no fault of your own (Regulation art. 32).

Applications go to the Ministry, which operates through regional Labour Office branches (art. 13; contact details below).

Statutory refusal grounds (art. 15): unfavourable labour-market conditions, no valid or expired entry permit, threat to national security / public order / public health, being under 18, false statements in the application, and being a banned person. The Ministry may also restrict permits by sector, occupation and region for set periods (art. 14).

The online portal

The Ministry's online system is the "Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Bakanlığı Online Hizmetler" portal at online.csgb.gov.ct.tr; Labour Office services moved there at the end of 2022. The old address calismaizni.gov.ct.tr now redirects to the Ministry site, and the "izin.gov.ct.tr" address quoted on some third-party sites does not exist. The employer's side drives the application through the portal.

Required documents

For a first application, the official source lists:

• The pre-approval form
• The workplace's Social Insurance and Provident Fund registration / no-debt certificates
• A tax clearance certificate
• The employment contract and worker card
• A health report
• A passport copy
• For third-country nationals: a bank letter of guarantee

Forms and clearance documents change; verify the current list with the Labour Office before applying. The amount and conditions of the third-country bank guarantee vary — confirm the current requirement with the Ministry.

Duration and the workplace tie

• Duration: a work permit is issued for at least six months and at most one year, with durations set according to labour-market conditions (art. 9).
• Tied to the workplace (art. 10): the permit is valid only for the workplace named on it. You cannot work anywhere else or for another employer, and the permit cannot be transferred to a different employer. Changing jobs means a fresh permit process started by the new employer.
• Costs (Regulation art. 32): all permit-related costs and fees are the employer's; nothing may be deducted from your wage or claimed back from you. Fee amounts are set by regulation and schedules and change over time; confirm current figures with the Ministry.

Extension

• The extension application must be filed within three months (90 days) of the permit's expiry at the latest, and may be filed up to two months before expiry.
• You must not have spent more than 135 days abroad in the preceding one-year period.

If the job ends, the permit ends

Article 10(3) of the Law is blunt: if the worker does not start the job, commits a fault of attendance, is dismissed, or the employment relationship ends in whatever way, the work permit becomes invalid and counts as cancelled. Rights arising from the Labour Law and other laws survive the termination.

Two practical consequences:

• Notification: the employer must report a departed foreign worker to the Ministry and the relevant institutions within 15 days of the departure date (art. 17(1), as amended by 25/2025). The notification is accepted without penalty regardless of the deadline if entry-exit records show the worker is abroad, or if the worker has started a permit process with another employer.
• Staying on: how long you may remain in the country after the permit lapses is governed by immigration law, not labour law. Day-counts circulating online for this could not be verified against any official source; if you leave a job, confirm your residence position with the Immigration Office before assuming anything.

Your payslip: social insurance contributions

The employer must employ foreign permit-holders subject to North Cyprus labour and social security law (63/2006 art. 18) — uninsured employment is illegal. Standard contribution rates for employed workers are set by article 78(1) of the Social Security Law 73/2007:

• Employee share: 9%
• Employer share: 10.5%, plus an occupational accident / disease premium (0.5%-6% by risk class, borne entirely by the employer)
• State share: 6%

The employer withholds your share from the wage, adds its own, and pays the total by the 20th of the following month (art. 86). These rates are statutory but can change; check your payslip against the current law.

The third-country difference (D3/E2/H2 payroll types)

A decree with force of law (7/2026), in force since 1 February 2026, raised the employee's shares for insured persons who are not TRNC citizens and whose country has no social security agreement with North Cyprus ("third-country" nationals) by a combined 4.75 points. Three payroll types implement it:

• D3 (work-permit holder not drawing an old-age pension): employee 13%, employer 9.75% plus the occupational premium, state 1.25%.
• E2 (work-permit holder already drawing an old-age pension): employee 13%, employer 11% plus the occupational premium; no state share.
• H2 (business-establishment permit holder, who pays the employer share too): 22.75% plus the occupational premium, state 1.25%.

Turkish citizens are outside this regime: a social security agreement between Turkey and the TRNC, signed in 2017, is in force, so Turkish nationals do not meet the "third-country" definition and remain on the standard rates. The agreement also lets insurance periods completed in the two countries be combined for pension entitlement. For everyone else, the decree is expressly temporary in character — confirm which payroll type applies to you with your employer and the Social Insurance Department before you start.

The Provident Fund: most foreign workers are outside it

The Provident Fund (İhtiyat Sandığı) is a savings scheme built on employee and employer contributions — but it largely does not apply to foreign workers. Under article 5(1)(A) of the Provident Fund Law, foreign workers first registered from 1 January 2008 onwards, and foreigners arriving from abroad to work after 1 February 2009, fall outside the Fund's savings coverage. The exceptions, who remain covered, are:

• Foreign academic staff at North Cyprus universities
• Foreign pilots and licensed aircraft technicians at airlines
• Foreigners employed in government departments

Foreigners holding permanent residence, and those exempt from the work permit, must join the Fund like TRNC citizens. For covered workers the standard contribution is at least 4% of gross wage from the employee plus at least 4% as an employer deposit (art. 8).

For foreign workers outside the coverage, the employer instead pays a 5% "local employment contribution premium" on the monthly gross wage (art. 8(6)(C)) — this is not a saving credited to you and can only be used to promote local employment. Under the regulation on payments to foreign workers removed from coverage, such workers are, on application, paid out the entirety of any premiums, deposits and interest accumulated in their account, with payments made in application order subject to the fund's cash flow. Confirm with the Provident Fund Department which deductions apply in your case and what you can withdraw on leaving.

Penalties for unpermitted work

• Employing a foreigner without a permit (art. 7) and working — or running an economic activity on one's own account — without one (art. 8) are both prohibited; violations additionally trigger the Aliens and Immigration Law, which is where deportation risk lives.
• Administrative fines are indexed to the minimum wage: one current gross monthly minimum wage per unpermitted person, increasing on repeat offences within the same year (art. 24). Court-imposed penalties can reach ten times the gross monthly minimum wage per person and/or up to one year's imprisonment (art. 25).
• An employer convicted of unpermitted hiring is barred from public tenders for one year (art. 7(3)); persistent violations can bring a workplace closure of up to two months (art. 24(6)).

Because the penalties are defined as minimum-wage multiples, the amounts move with the minimum wage. The current gross monthly minimum wage is ₺60,618.00^{7 Jul 2026 ↗}, in force from 2026-01-01^{7 Jul 2026 ↗}.

Sector restrictions: a current announcement

Per a Ministry announcement effective 28 July 2025:

• Third-country workers who have completed their first year in agriculture, livestock or construction may move horizontally between those three sectors without a waiting period.
• Pre-approval applications for Bangladeshi citizens are not being accepted in any sector until further notice; for Turkmenistan citizens they are suspended in all sectors except domestic services.

This arrangement is explicitly temporary and the Ministry may revisit it; check the current position on the Ministry's announcement page before applying.

Students

Students have their own "Student Work Permit" with daily/weekly hour caps, banned sectors and a from-the-second-year eligibility rule — see Working as a Student.

Contact

Applications run through the Labour Office regional offices. The central counter for foreign work-permit files and the head office (source: Labour Office):

• Work Permit Centre (foreign work-permit counter) — Şht. Şener Enver Sok. No:28, Yenişehir, Nicosia (Lefkoşa); tel (0392) 22 70 085 / 22 70 207 / 22 80543 / 22 90 272 / 22 70 395 / 22 86 022
• Labour Office head office — Selçuklu Cad. No:141, Bakanlıklar Yolu, Kızılbaş, Nicosia (Lefkoşa); tel (0392) 611 22 22 / 22 70 467 / 22 76245; fax 22 86 022

The full list of regional offices (Nicosia, Famagusta, Kyrenia, Güzelyurt, İskele, Lefke) with addresses and phone numbers is in the student work guide's contact section; the same offices handle general work-permit files. The offices work in Turkish; if you don't speak it, bring your employer's HR or a Turkish-speaking colleague.

Numbers and addresses change; verify current details on the institution's own page.