Settlement of international investment disputes by way of international arbitration

International investments are one of the factors that shape international economic relations. International investment law, on the other hand, is the set of rules that regulate the relations between the parties that make and accept the investment. Due to the nature of the investment relations, there offen occurs disputes between the investing and accepting parties which are resolved by way of international investment arbitration. Since international investment disputes are legal disputes arising from economic relations, it is common to evaluate these disputes by their legal dimensions. However, the subject is not narrow enough to be examined only by legal senses; it is essential to take into account all the economic, social and political dimensions of the issue in order to be able to comprehensively understand international investments and the disputes arising from these investments since they, themselves, are a product of the economic, political, social and legal relations between/amongst the parties. On the other hand, as a result of the Turkish and English literature review, it is observed that the issue was examined economically and legally, whereas social and political dimensions were not touched upon, especially in the Turkish literature. In addition to that, again in the Turkish literature, it has been noticed that in the legal aspect of the issue, various rules were not widely covered and that there exists a lack of comparison of the rules. In the English literature, on the other hand, the political dimension of the subject has been given a wide coverage, and it has been revealed by the comparison made between the legal sources that this political dimension is handled in the light of the historical developments and that international investment law is evaluated as a system or a regime. For this reason, in the three chapters of the thesis, respectively, economic, legal and the political aspects of the subject will be handled. Again, in the third -and last- chapter, detailed examination of the legal rules and comparison between the rules shall also be included. In addition to the literature review, relevant websites is benefitted throughout the study to provide first-hand and up-to-date data. This thesis study aims at meeting the deficit in Turkish literature of the resolution of international investment disputes that have gained momentum in our country and world-wide. The approach followed in the study in order to achieve this aim is to touch upon the economic, as well as the social and political dimensions of the disputes arising in the context of international investments and investment relations. Briefly, it is believed that the study will fill the gap in the Turkish literature as a result of the multi-dimensional information to be obtained by this holistic approach, which we very much hope to be stimulating at the end of the study, and provide the legal rules to be applied to disputes are interpreted from a wider perspective.