Engineer, pilot, lawyer, now founder, all in service of one throughline: coordination without a crown.
Each new layer of civilization gets rewired before anyone agrees to a plan for it: first information, then value, now intelligence.
The next layer is coordination: how humans organize, govern and trust each other at scale. Nobody has agreed to a plan for that one either.
That question runs through everything below: network cities, plural governance, digital identity, and the local communities that have to run on all of it.
Where the Lycian League is said to have practiced early proportional representation. ZuKaş 2025 filled these same stone seats.
Most résumés move in a straight line. Mine doesn't. Four disciplines, three ventures, one thread running through all of them: build something, find out how it breaks, build the next version better.
Electrical-electronics engineering. Systems engineering. A civil helicopter pilot's license from TAI. A law degree. Four separate ways of asking the same question, how does a complex system hold together, before I ever asked it about a country.
The entrepreneurship came earlier than the engineering finished: cross-border trade with Russia was my first venture, and the itch never went away. By 2021 that itch had a place to land, Kaş, on the Lycian coast, home to the ancient Lycian League and one of history's earliest known federal, proportional-representation systems. I founded Web3 Hub Kaş there that year, the direct predecessor to what is now ZuKaş.
Each one taught a different part of the same lesson: what keeps a complex system from coming apart under pressure.
Import-export between Türkiye and Russia: a company, a supply chain, and the first real lesson in building something that survives contact with the world.
Four disciplines and one entrepreneurial instinct converged on coordination without a crown. I founded Web3 Hub Kaş, grew it into Web3 META Hub, convened 200+ events across five continents, founded ZuKaş, and now develop the ZuGov governance stack, most recently from Network School, Balaji Srinivasan's program for the network-state era.
At a string of the field's defining stages, I was the only Turkish speaker or participant in the room, not part of a delegation, just the one who showed up.
Official speaker as founder of Web3 Kaş / Web3 META Hub, at one of the Gulf's flagship Ethereum gatherings.
Invited participant at the IEEE global blockchain and AI gathering, the only voice from Türkiye in the hall.
Introduced the "META" (Middle East, Türkiye, Africa) framing onto the regional stage.
Founded in Kaş in 2021, seeded organically by developers who relocated to the Turkish coast, and grown into an innovation hub for the META region: Middle East, Türkiye, Africa.
I introduced the "META" framing at the Alibaba Cloud Summit to re-center the map on Türkiye. In roughly two years the Hub ran 200+ events, moved from Kaş to Istanbul to Hong Kong, and embedded itself in Ethereum's core community as a localization partner and contributor at Zuzalu and Devcon. Partners and stages included Alibaba Cloud, BNB Chain, ChainIDE, 4SEAS, IEEE Global Blockchain, and Blockchain Turkey Platform.
A rooted network city on the Lycian coast, successor to Zuzalu, held where the ancient Lycian League is said to have practiced early proportional representation, at the theatres of Kaş and the parliament of Patara.
An 11-day living laboratory of governance. Around 50 participants (roughly 40% academics) plus 15 local science-high-school students; every session livestreamed to 1,500+ viewers.
Vitalik Buterin, Deep Funding, DAICOs, privacy voting
Michel Bauwens, cosmo-local civilization
Vít Jedlička, President of Liberland, at Patara
An application-based residency selected by contribution, not credentials. Pillars: privacy and security, governance and plurality, d/acc, phygital commons.
Vitalik Buterin, Glen Weyl, Michel Bauwens. Debut of the Grounding Engine, an AI epistemic auditor with zero voting power.
"A milestone in the maturation of pop-up villages into rooted oases." Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation
Long-term collaborator. Bauwens founded the P2P Foundation, on whose forum Satoshi Nakamoto announced Bitcoin in 2009, and where the Satoshi identity made some of its last public posts. We work together on cosmo-local governance and the frame behind ZuKaş.
Hosted on stage at ZuKaş 2025 for a recorded session on Deep Funding, DAICOs, privacy-preserving voting and permanent network nodes.
In conversation at ancient Patara on network states, contribution-based voting, and the lineage of the Lycian League.
Joining ZuKaş 2026. The Plurality framework is woven into the ZuGov governance stack.
Recorded conversation on bridging Web2 to Web3 and reaching developers across 185+ countries.
"Build and think alongside the people who shaped the field, then put them on the record."
A rooted network city on the Lycian coast, successor to Zuzalu, hosting Vitalik, Bauwens and Weyl.
zukas.live ↗
Open-source Plurality governance SDK. An AI epistemic auditor that surfaces reasoning gaps in real time, with zero voting power.
zugov.xyz ↗
META-region Web3 hub. 200+ events; Ethereum localization partner at Zuzalu and Devcon.
web3metahub.io ↗
P2P fiat-to-crypto exchange on an Ethereum L2 with World ID. ETHGlobal Taipei 2025, finalist (top 8).
Multidisciplinary Web3, AI and biotech program and a network of university blockchain clubs.
A standalone city-coordination app for Kaş: maps, transport, exchange and volunteering.
On AI, truth and the epistemic gap network states need to close before they can govern.
A running conversation series filmed on the Kaş terrace: founders, ambassadors and the odd ex-president of a micronation.
A theory of value, coordination and parallel emergence: the Karatani-Bauwens synthesis, developed in Tokens, Value & Parallel Emergence.
The framework behind ZuKaş's fourth-abstraction model: Lydia, Lycia, Ionia and Hikmet.
A manifesto for programmable civilization: the thesis under the Civilization education program.
ZuGov, ZuKaş, Nomadia and what's next. If you're building in network states or governance, let's talk.
I speak on network states, governance infrastructure, and building rooted communities from unlikely places.
Web3 META Hub and ZuKaş are always open to the right partners, sponsors and co-conspirators.
