Formation of contract According to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods

The purpose of this thesis is to compare formation of contract in UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and Turkish Law of Obligations and formation of contract when CISG is chosen as applicable law. Rapid increase in international trade brought out the need of international cooperation and solving conflicts faster and with predictable results. The opinion of reliable trade would be possible with uniform rules which govern contracts between countries with different social, economic and legal systems. There has been many studies made on unification of international trade law to reach these purposes. The antecedents to the CISG; the Convention relating to a Uniform Law on the Formation of Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (ULF) and the Convention relating to a Uniform Law on the International Sale of Goods (ULIS), were done at The Hague in 1964. UNCITRAL was also established to support harmonisation and unification of international trade law. In 1978 ULIS and ULF were reviewed and combined in one text as CISG and was signed on April 11, 1980. It came into force in eleven countries on January 1, 1988. Today, seventy nine countries are parties to this Convention. Republic of Turkey ratified CISG on July 7, 2010 and its entry into force was on August 1, 2011. Our thesis consists of two chapters. In the first chapter, we examined historical development and structure of CISG, determining the applicable law to contractual obligations and issues which are out of the scope of applicable law. In the second chapter, we go through formation of contract according to CISG, elements of contract, time when a contract is concluded and time when a contract matures. In this thesis we gave examples from court decisions and arbitral awards. Keywords 1. Private International Law 2. Formation of Contract 3. Contract Law 4. International Sale of Goods 5. CISG