Turkish Contract Law

Ilhan Helvaci is a professor in the department of Civil Law in the Faculty of Law at Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey. He has been teaching civil law, family law, law of obligations, property law, inheritance law, law of guarantees and contracts law for nearly 30 years. He graduated from Istanbul University Law Faculty as an undergraduate in 1987, and then completed his graduate studies in the Private Law Department of the Institute of Social Sciences at Istanbul University in 1989. The same year, he began working as a faculty member. He completed his PhD studies in 1997 in the Private Law Department at the Institute of Social Sciences at Istanbul University. During his doctoral research, he was awarded a scholarship by the Swiss Government at the Lausanne University Law School and L'Institut Suisse de Droit Compare. In 2001, he received a research scholarship from the Hamburg Max Planck Institut fur internationales und auslandisches Privatrecht and conducted research in the field of comparative law. He received the title of Associate Professor in 2002 and later was appointed as a professor in the field of Civil Law at the Law Faculty at Istanbul University in 2008. During the years 2005-2006 he was a visiting faculty member at Institute of Social Sciences at Galatasaray University. He was also a visiting faculty member at the Law School at Koc University, between the years 2004-2010. Professor Helvaci is an attorney registered with the Istanbul Bar Association since 1991. He is also a member of the arbitration court at the Arbitration Center in the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (ITOTAM) and currently serves as vice-chairman. He has served as an arbitrator with both the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce and in private cases (including ICC arbitration) relating to disputes in his areas of specialization, particularly contractual disputes. He has also given legal training on loan contracts and guarantees in several banks since 1997. Currently, he is a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Law (2016-2017).

Part I Obligations arising from contracts: Formation of the contract.- Public promise.- Form of the contract.- Standard terms.- Content of the contract.- Abstract acknowledgement of debt.- Contract interpretation and simulation.- Incomplete contracts.- Revision of the contract (hardship).- Mistake, fraud and duress.- Unfair exploitation (lesion).- Agency.- Part II The effect of obligations, performance, non-performance, the effect on third parties: Performance of obligations.- The object of performance.- Performance of the debtor.- Place of performance.- Time of performance.- Proof of performance.- Default of creditor.- Natural obligations.- Non-performance of the obligation.- Default of the debtor.- Effects of the obligation on third parties.- Part III Estinguishment of obligations and limitation period: Extinguishment of obligations.- Limintation period.- Part IV Joint and several debtors and creditors, conditions, earnest and forfeit money, and penalty: Joint and several debtors.- Joint and several creditors.- Conditional contracts.- Earnest money and forfeit money.- Contractual penalty.- Part V Assignment of claims, assumption of debts, transfer of contracts and joining a party to an existing contract: Assignment of claims.- Assumption of obligations.- Transfer of contracts and joining a party to an existing contract.