Plurality in Turkey

Translating a book into another language is usually work that takes months or years. In Turkey, though, every chapter of Plurality, the book by Audrey Tang and E. Glen Weyl, was turned into Turkish in about two days. How was it made, and how has it been received in Turkey?

In short

In September 2026 an individual developer translated every chapter of Plurality into Turkish and published it in a form anyone may use freely (CC0) [1][2]. For the last 13 chapters, the records show that they were made together with AI [1].

On the other hand, the research for this article (October 2026) found no Turkish-language reviews, news reports or talks discussing the book itself. Where Tang and Weyl have been introduced in Turkish, it has mainly been in reporting on the 2020 pandemic and in cryptocurrency media. There, the two appear separately.

For example

The Turkish translation Çoğulluk (September 5–6, 2026). A GitHub (a website for making documents together) user named omgbbqhaxx copied (forked) the book's official repository and turned every chapter into Turkish. The author name in the update history is Yasin Aktimur. The title is Çoğulluk: İşbirliğine Dayalı Teknolojinin ve Demokrasinin Geleceği (Plurality: the future of collaboration-based technology and democracy) [1][2]. The next day, a reading site was set up, with a read-aloud feature called "Bölümü dinle" (listen to the chapter) for each chapter [1][3].

A Turkish translation of a conversation between Harari and Tang (August 1, 2020). The news site A3 Haber translated into Turkish and published part of a conversation between the historian Yuval Noah Harari and Tang on a RadicalxChange program, hosted by Puja Ohlhaver (translated by Ayşen Tekşen) [4]. The original English transcript is also public [5].

In more detail

How the translation was made

The first update (September 5, 2026) added 22 chapter files at once, together with a glossary, "SOZLUK.md". This update shows no co-author [1].

The remaining 13 chapters were added one at a time over about two hours on September 6. Each of those records ends with "Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5" or "Claude Fable 5.1". Claude is the name of an AI. The updates for the reading site and the read-aloud feature carry the same note [1]. So at least the last 13 chapters and the site are known to have been made together with AI. How the first 22 chapters were translated cannot be told from the records.

The read-aloud feature runs a Turkish speech model inside the browser. When the model cannot be loaded, it switches to the voice the browser already has [1].

No sign yet of it spreading

As of October 2, 2026, the repository had no stars (roughly, "likes") and no forks. No Turkish PDF or EPUB (an e-book format) has been released. No trace of contact about the Turkish translation has been found in the book's official repository either [1].

How Tang was introduced in Turkish

Turkish articles about Tang cluster in 2020. A long article in Siber Bülten introduced the map of mask stocks, the Sunflower Movement, the civic participation platform vTaiwan, the civic hacker community g0v, the fact-checking service Cofacts and more [6]. Mikro-Makro, drawing on reporting by AFP, reported that Tang calls herself a "muhafazakâr anarşist" (conservative anarchist) [7]. → Audrey Tang · vTaiwan · g0v

Weyl became known through a different door

In 2022–2023, cryptocurrency media introduced Weyl as a co-author of the papers on the "soulbound token", a digital certificate that cannot be transferred, and on "Decentralized Society" [8][9].

A column in Havadis, a Turkish-language newspaper in Northern Cyprus, rendered Radical Markets, the earlier book by Weyl and Eric Posner, as "Radikal Piyasalar" and introduced its voting mechanism. The columnist, however, admits to not understanding the finer details of the mechanism [10]. → Radical Markets · Glen Weyl

Community Notes draws attention in Turkey too

According to BBC Türkçe, Meta has worked with two organizations, Teyit and Doğruluk Payı, for fact-checking in Turkey. In January 2025, Meta announced that it would end fact-checking by professionals and move to "Community Notes", in which users add notes (starting in the United States, it was said). The same article reports that the founder of Teyit fears that divisive false information and conspiracy theories will spread again and that polarization will grow [11]. → Community Notes

Participation mechanisms at home

Turkey also has practices close in form to the participation tools the book describes. The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality started participatory budgeting (a system in which residents propose how part of the budget is spent and choose by vote) in 2022, and since 2023 has called it "Bütçem İstanbul" [12]. In the round for fiscal year 2027, 40 of 634 proposals were put to a citizens' vote and 15 were chosen [13]. According to an announcement by the municipality of Varto, its participatory budget came second out of 188 applicant municipalities in the public vote for the 25th-anniversary award of the International Observatory on Participatory Democracy (OIDP) [14].

However, no Turkish-language material has been found that discusses these practices in connection with Plurality, Tang or Weyl.

What is debated

• Criticism of Weyl from the left. A Turkish translation of the critic Evgeny Morozov's essay "Tekno-Feodal Aklın Eleştirisi" (Critique of techno-feudal reason) places Weyl and Posner as younger and more neoliberal thinkers, and takes up the fact that Radical Markets used the word "techno-feudalism". A note also says that Weyl has supported the position that treats users as workers [15]. This translation appears to have been made from the Spanish version, and no translator is named.
• Criticism of Community Notes' emphasis on "agreement". Doğruluk Payı presented an analysis by Maldita.es, a Spanish organization. In 2024 only 8.3% of notes added on X were approved for display. Notes citing a fact-checking organization as a source are more likely to be approved and are displayed faster, but even so, 85% of them are not displayed. The article explains that this is because the system does not display a note unless users with different views agree on it [16].
• No Turkish criticism of the book itself has been found yet. Nor is there any material discussing the quality of the translation made together with AI.

Common misunderstandings

• An example of a misunderstanding: getting quadratic voting wrong. The Havadis column above gives a numerical example after saying the columnist does not understand the mechanism. That example does not match the description of quadratic voting, in which you pay voting rights equal to the square of the number of votes. Another Turkish explainer says that putting 4 votes on one proposal requires 16 voting rights [10][17]. → Quadratic voting

Where it fits in Plurality

The English edition of the book does not mention Turkey. The points of contact in Turkey have come not from the book's side but from the translation and from the surrounding topics.

The glossary of the Turkish translation explains how terms were chosen [18].

• The title and central concept is "Çoğulluk". The symbol ⿻ is kept untranslated, following the Traditional Mandarin edition.
• Translating collaborative as "işbirlikçi" is avoided, because in Turkish it carries the meaning of someone who collaborates with the enemy; "işbirliğine dayalı" (based on collaboration) is used instead.
• Quadratic Voting is "Karesel Oylama" and Quadratic Funding is "Karesel Fonlama". Governance is "yönetişim", kept separate from "yönetim" (administration).

In the text, Plurality (Çoğulluk) and pluralism (çoğulculuk) are different words. For example, "ethnic pluralism" in chapter 2-1 is "etnik çoğulculuk" [2][19]. → Terms across languages · Book editions and translations

Articles on other countries and regions:

• Plurality in Japan · Plurality in Korea · Plurality in Thailand
• Plurality in the Russian-speaking world · Plurality in Italy

Further reading

1. Update history of the Turkish translation (English, records) — https://github.com/omgbbqhaxx/plurality/commits/main
2. Plurality, 3-0 "What is ⿻?" (English, book, CC0) — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-0/eng/
3. Reading site of the Turkish translation (in Turkish, book, with read-aloud, CC0) — https://omgbbqhaxx.github.io/plurality/tr/
4. Repository and glossary of the Turkish translation (in Turkish, book, CC0) — https://github.com/omgbbqhaxx/plurality
5. Doğruluk Payı, "X'te Hakikat Arayışı: Topluluk Notları" (in Turkish, article) — https://www.dogrulukpayi.com/bulten/x-te-hakikat-arayisi-topluluk-notlari

Sources

1. Update history of omgbbqhaxx/plurality (2026-09-05 to 06) — https://github.com/omgbbqhaxx/plurality/commits/main ［CC0］
2. omgbbqhaxx/plurality (repository of the Turkish translation) — https://github.com/omgbbqhaxx/plurality
3. Reading site of the Turkish translation — https://omgbbqhaxx.github.io/plurality/tr/ ［CC0］
4. A3 Haber, Turkish translation of the conversation between Harari and Tang (2020-08-01, in Turkish) — https://a3haber.com/2020/08/01/escinsel-tarihci-harari-ve-tayvanin-ilk-trans-kadin-bakani-tang-ile-soylesi-gozetleme-teknolojisi-bizi-kendimizden-daha-iyi-ve-once-mi-kesfediyor/ ［CC0］
5. Transcript of the conversation between Tang and Harari (2020-06-30, CC0) — https://archive.tw/2020-06-30-conversation-with-yuval-noah-harari ［CC0］
6. Siber Bülten, article on Tang (2020-08-09, in Turkish) — https://siberbulten.com/makale-analiz/tayvanin-pandemiyi-hackleyen-dijital-bakani-audrey-tang/
7. Mikro-Makro, article on Tang (2020-06-26, in Turkish) — https://mikro-makro.net/tayvanin-transseksuel-dijitallesmeden-sorumlu-bakani-fikirleri-ile-destek-goruyor
8. BeInCrypto Türkiye, explainer on soulbound tokens (2022, in Turkish) — https://tr.beincrypto.com/soulbound-token-sbt-nedir-vitalik-buterinin-cilgin-nft-dijital-kimlik-projesi/
9. BtcTurk, explainer on soulbound tokens (2023, in Turkish) — https://bilgiplatformu.btcturk.com/kripto-okur-yazarlik/soulbond-token-nedir/
10. Havadis, column "Eşit oy hakkı hangi durumlarda adil değil?" (2022-07-04, in Turkish) — https://www.havadiskibris.com/esit-oy-hakki-hangi-durumlarda-adil-degil/
11. BBC Türkçe, article on Meta's fact-checking (2025-01-18, in Turkish) — https://www.bbc.com/turkce/articles/crm7w32dez0o
12. bianet, article on Istanbul's participatory budget (in Turkish) — https://bianet.org/haber/istanbullular-ibb-butcesini-planliyor-262567
13. Gazete Kadıköy, article on the results of Bütçem İstanbul 2027 (2026-08-10, in Turkish) — https://www.gazetekadikoy.com.tr/cevre/istanbulun-projelerini-istanbullular-secti
14. ANKA, article on Varto's participatory budget (2026-09-24, in Turkish) — https://ankahaber.net/haber/varto-belediyesi-nin-katilimci-butce-calismasi-oidp-25-yil-odulu-surecinde-ikinci-oldu-607d9747
15. Turkish translation of Morozov, "Tekno-Feodal Aklın Eleştirisi" (2022, archived, in Turkish) — http://web.archive.org/web/20241206191036/https://www.devrimcidemokrasi3.org/tekno-feodal-aklin-elestirisi-kapitalizmin-itibarini-aklamamaliyiz/
16. Doğruluk Payı, "X'te Hakikat Arayışı: Topluluk Notları" (2025-02-28, in Turkish) — https://www.dogrulukpayi.com/bulten/x-te-hakikat-arayisi-topluluk-notlari
17. NinjaNews, explainer on voting methods (2025, in Turkish) — https://ninjanews.io/akademi/yonetisim-tokenlarinin-gelecegi/
18. Glossary of the Turkish translation, "SOZLUK.md" — https://github.com/omgbbqhaxx/plurality
19. Plurality, 2-1 "A View from Yushan" — https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/ ［CC0］