Originally from Arbitration Law of Turkey: Practice and Procedure

When parties agree to arbitrate, one of the crucial issues for them to decide upon is whether to proceed with institutional arbitration or non institutional ad hoc arbitration1. If the parties make the decision to refer to institutional arbitration then the question still remains as to which particular arbitration institute they should refer their dispute2.

Ad hoc arbitration gives more freedom to the parties to run their arbitration procedure as they see fit; it is mostly up to the parties and the arbitrators to determine how to conduct the arbitration. If there is a disagreement between the parties on procedural issues, the Turkish International Arbitration Law, TIAC, provides rules for arbitration proceedings in Turkey. In addition to this, UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules are very well known and commonly used ad hoc rules for arbitration in Turkey.

Since ad hoc arbitral proceedings are independent of any institution, the parties have a great degree of flexibility to specify different aspects of the arbitral procedure, subject to the mandatory laws laid down by TIAC. Either in their original agreement or at a later date, the parties may determine how the arbitrators are to be appointed, how many arbitrators there should be, the procedure to be followed, the timetable for the arbitration and any other special requirements they may deem appropriate, having regard to the specific characteristics of the contract in dispute. However, such broad freedom may sometimes create difficulties and accordingly the parties may choose to subject their ad hoc arbitration agreement to existing ad hoc arbitration rules, UNCITRAL for example, dealing with all or most of the above issues.