State responsibility concerning transit natural gas pipelines under European Union law, international law and domestic law

Bridging Europe and Asia, Turkey is located between the hydrocarbon sourcing countries at Caspian Basin, the Middle East and the major recipients in Europe. With the successful completion of major pipeline projects such as Bakü-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, TANAP and Turkish Stream, Turkey has now become a major "energy corridor". Yet, different from oil, in natural gas, transfer pipeline system is heavily used and due to high initial capital investments, the operators of the projects aim to sustain a prolonged monopoly on the natural gas transmission network. That is to say, there occurs an "inherent" conflict between the operators of the natural gas pipeline and the domestic recipients of natural gas where in Europe and Turkey energy markets are regulated to manage the competition for the benefit of the consumers. One aspect of this thesis is to dwell upon the "state liability" stemming from the natural gas pipelines through the lenses of contemporary European and Turkish Energy Law as well as fundamental principles within Turkish Administrative Law. The analysis of EU Energy Law, especially the Third Gas Directive, is useful in the sense that Turkish Energy Law is in great harmony with the EU Energy Law. In this respect, the processes and activities pertaining to natural gas as well as the identification of the actors of these operations are analyzed. Due to this identification, the practice area of administration and private entities and how they are separated is investigated. Followingly, the public service nature of these activities is assessed in a way to determine the limits of state liability stemming from public service obligations. This assessment constitutes the foundation of the state liability which defines the legal regime pertaining to the activities. The dichotomy of Civil Law and Administrative Law creates a conclusive approach of liability with the survey on case law and current legislation. The second aspect of the study focuses on determining "state responsibility" stemming from being a part of the transit or cross-border natural gas pipeline network. This is where the seemingly relevant sources of multilateral legal framework enter the scene such as Energy Charter Treaty, WTO/GATT and Special Natural Gas Pipeline Agreements between countries. The evaluation of the relevant international law framework is realized in a way to catch the common patterns between "state responsibility" against other countries and the "state liability" against domestic agents, mostly consumers and citizens. In this respect, several key issues in both areas are determined such as third-party access, unbundling, protection of the environment and consumer protection.