Annulment of arbitral awards in international investment arbitration

Some legal remedies such as; revision, supplementary decision, interpretation or annulment, have been accepted for the cases in which the parties consider an arbitral award is ill-judged, unjust, constituted under the influence of the improper applicable law, containing procedural mistakes or given by biased arbitrators or where the parties are not satisfied with the award. The most often used remedy with the reputation of the most severe sanction that can cause the nullity of the arbitral award is annulment. The application for the annulment of the arbitral award differs regarding the tribunal which rendered the award as if it was composed under ICSID or an institution other than ICSID or ad hoc. While the arbitral awards which have been rendered under institutions other than ICSID or rendered by an ad hoc tribunal can only be annulled by the court at the seat of arbitration, application for annulment in local courts is not possible regarding the arbitral awards under ICSID. For the annulment of an award under ICSID, an application to the Center is required with respect to the provisions of the Convention and subsequently shall be examined by an ad hoc committee which will be constituted under the provisions of the Convention in accordance with the limited grounds for annulment. According to Article 52 of the ICSID Convention, the parties can submit a written request to the General Secretariat for the annulment of the award by depending on one or more than one grounds listed under the article. Considering that the courts at the seat of arbitration have jurisdiction for the annulment of non-ICSID awards, the court will decide if the award will be annulled or not in accordance with the law of the seat of arbitration. The examination of several provisions on arbitration revealed that grounds for annulment of an arbitral award show similarity with the national laws and the provisions under international law since these grounds are based on the grounds of refusal of enforcement under New York Convention. In the cases where the seat of arbitration has been agreed as Turkey or even if the absence of a choice of seat of arbitration, the Code of International Arbitration has been agreed as the procedural rules that will be applied to an foreign disputes, Turkish court will have jurisdiction for annulment. The Code of International Arbitration will be applied to the annulment under investment arbitration when the annulment procedures have been initiated in Turkey.